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The management of petroclival region meningioma remains the ultimate achievement in neurosurgery, because of the formidable technical challenges involved.To describe the technique and feasibility of the purely endoscopic far-lateral supracerebellar infratentorial approach (EF-SCITA) for the treatment of petroclival region meningiomas.We reviewed the clinical data of 10 consecutive cases of petroclival region meningiomas treated with the EF-SCITA from August 2018 to August 2020. The clinical outcomes were analyzed. The patient was placed in the lateral position, and then, a "C" shaped incision and craniotomy with exposed sigmoid and transverse sinuses were performed. With the endoscopic holder, endoscopic procedures were performed using standard 2-hand microsurgical techniques. Whether the tentorium or Meckel cave was handled depended on the tumor extension.The mean diameter was 45 × 25 mm. Dizziness and headache were the main symptoms. All 10 patients achieved gross total or subtotal resection (Petroclival Meningioma Grade I-III) with good neurological outcomes. The EF-SCITA provides satisfactory, direct exposure to the petroclival region. Cranial nerve deficits are the main postoperative complications. Two patients had a trochlear nerve injury, 3 patients had transient facial paralysis, and 2 patients had oculomotor paralysis (1 total and 1 incomplete), but both of them recovered during the follow-up period. One patient experienced an ipsilateral superior cerebellar artery infarction, and another patient had transient hemiparesis.The EF-SCITA is effective for most petroclival region meningiomas, except for the cavernous sinus type. This approach simplifies craniotomy procedures, omits burdensome petrosectomy, and avoids crossing posterior neurovascular structures.

Background Trigeminal schwannomas (TSs) are mostly benign tumors and the dumbbell-shaped subtype is the most challenging, surgery remains difficult and risky. Objective We introduce a novel surgical approach named endoscopic far-lateral infratentorial supracerebellar approach (EFL-SCITA) for removing dumbbell-shaped TSs, and further discuss our experience and operation technique. Methods EF-SCITA was performed for resection of 5 cases of TSs between January 2020 and April 2022. The entire procedure was done endoscopically with the goal of total tumor resection. During the operation, the tumor was exposed in close proximity and multiple angles under the endoscope, and the peri-tumor nerves were carefully identified and protected, especially the normal trigeminal fiber bundles around the tumor. Results All the tumors of 5 cases involved the middle and posterior cranial fossa, of which total removal was achieved in 2 cases, near-total removal in 2 cases and subtotal removal in 1 case. Most common preoperative symptoms improved after surgery. Two patients had postoperative mild facial paralysis (House-Brackmann grade II), 1 patient had abducens palsy, both recovered during the follow-up period. Two patients experienced new postoperative facial hypesthesia and 1 experienced mastication weakness, which were not recovered. There was no tumor recurrence or residual tumor growth during the follow-up period in any of the patients. Conclusion EFL-SCITA is a new and effective alternative for the surgical treatment of TSs. For dumbbell-shaped TSs, this approach provides sufficient surgical field exposure and freedom of operation.

Somatotroph adenomas are obviously heterogeneous in clinical characteristics, imaging performance, pathological diagnosis and therapeutic effect. The heterogeneity of the tumors, especially for SG and DG type adenomas, have attracted great interest in identifying the specific pathological markers and therapeutic targets of them. However, previous analyses of the molecular characteristics of the subtypes of somatotroph adenomas were performed at genomic and transcriptome level. The proteomic differences between the two subtypes of somatotroph adenomas are still unknown. Tumor samples were surgically removed from 10 sporadic pituitary somatotroph adenoma patients and grouped according to the pathological type. Tandem mass tag (TMT)-based quantitative proteomic analysis was employed to analyze the proteomic differences between SG and DG tumors. In total, 228 differentially expressed proteins were identified between SG adenomas and DG adenomas. They were enriched mainly in extracellular matrix (ECM)-receptor interaction, leukocyte transendothelial migration, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy and DNA replication pathways. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis indicated that Cadherin-1 and Catenin beta-1 were the most important key proteins in the differences between SG and DG adenomas. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) confirmed the expression levels of the key proteins. This study provides large-scale proteome molecular characteristics of distinct granulation subtypes of somatotroph adenomas. Compared with DG adenomas, The differential protein of SG adenomas mostly enrich in invasive and proliferative functions and pathways at the proteomic level. Cadherin-1 and Catenin beta-1 play key roles in the different biological characteristics of the two tumor subtypes.

Purpose This study sought to employ the response surface methodology (RSM) to investigate factors that affect Bacillus amyloliquefaciens X8 bacteriostasis. Methods Design Expert 8.0.6 was used to perform multiple regression fitting and create antimicrobial mathematical models to optimize the antimicrobial effect of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens X8. A Shodex Protein KW-2004 gel column and a C18 column coupled with a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system were used to separate and purify the antimicrobial substances extracted from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens X8 (X8-AS). An Agilent 6410 Triple Quad LC/MS system and Nicolet-is10 system were used to analyze X8-AS via liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and infrared spectroscopy (IR). Results The results demonstrated that the optimum antimicrobial conditions for Bacillus amyloliquefaciens X8 (at which antimicrobial activity was increased by 22.3%) were pH 6, 30 ℃, and 36 h of incubation. Conclusion The results showed that the relative molecular weight of X8-AS was 1413.5 Da. After searching through the infrared spectrum material library, X8-AS was found to be highly similar to chondroitin sulfate.

Background Cistanche is an important genus of Orobanchaceae, with critical medicinal, economic, and desertification control values. However, the phylogenetic relationships of Cistanche genus remained obscure. To date, no effective molecular markers have been reported to discriminate effectively the Cistanche closely related species reported here. In this study, we obtained and characterized the plastomes of four Cistanche species from China, to clarify the phylogenetic relationship within the genus, and to develop molecular markers for species discrimination. Results Four Cistanche species (Cistanche deserticola, Cistanche salsa, Cistanche tubulosa and Cistanche sinensis), were deep-sequenced with Illumina. Their plastomes were assembled using SPAdes and annotated using CPGAVAS2. The plastic genomes were analyzed in detail, finding that all showed the conserved quadripartite structure (LSC-IR-SSC-IR) and with full sizes ranging from 75 to 111 Kbp. We observed a significant contraction of small single copy region (SSC, ranging from 0.4–29 Kbp) and expansion of inverted repeat region (IR, ranging from 6–30 Kbp), with C. deserticola and C. salsa showing the smallest SSCs with only one gene (rpl32). Compared with other Orobanchaceae species, Cistanche species showed extremely high rates of gene loss and pseudogenization, as reported for other parasitic Orobanchaceae species. Furthermore, analysis of sequence divergence on protein-coding genes showed the three genes (rpl22, clpP and ycf2) had undergone positive selection in the Cistanche species under study. In addition, by comparison of all available Cistanche plastomes we found 25 highly divergent intergenic spacer (IGS) regions that were used to predict two DNA barcode markers (Cis-mk01 and Cis-mk02 based on IGS region trnR-ACG-trnN-GUU) and eleven specific DNA barcode markers using Ecoprimer software. Experimental validation showed 100% species discrimination success rate with both type of markers. Conclusion Our findings have shown that Cistanche species are an ideal model to investigate the structure variation, gene loss and pseudogenization during the process of plastome evolution in parasitic species, providing new insights into the evolutionary relationships among the Cistanche species. In addition, the developed DNA barcodes markers allow the proper species identification, ensuring the effective and safe use of Cistanche species as medicinal products.

Developing new nanoplatforms for dynamically and quantitatively visualizing drug accumulation and targeting within tumors is crucial for precision cancer theranostic. However, achieving efficient tumor therapy via synergistic photothermal/photodynamic therapy (PTT/PDT) using a single excitation light source, remains a challenge. In this work, we designed Gd-surface functionalized copper sulfide nanoparticles that were modified with folic acid (FA) (Cu

Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the cognitive center that integrates and regulates global brain activity. However, the whole-brain organization of PFC axon projections remains poorly understood. Using single-neuron reconstruction of 6,357 mouse PFC projection neurons, we identified 64 projectome-defined subtypes. Each of four previously known major cortico-cortical subnetworks was targeted by a distinct group of PFC subtypes defined by their first-order axon collaterals. Further analysis unraveled topographic rules of soma distribution within PFC, first-order collateral branch point-dependent target selection and terminal arbor distribution-dependent target subdivision. Furthermore, we obtained a high-precision hierarchical map within PFC and three distinct functionally related PFC modules, each enriched with internal recurrent connectivity. Finally, we showed that each transcriptome subtype corresponds to multiple projectome subtypes found in different PFC subregions. Thus, whole-brain single-neuron projectome analysis reveals organization principles of axon projections within and outside PFC and provides the essential basis for elucidating neuronal connectivity underlying diverse PFC functions.

Extensive photosynthetic gene loss and rapid evolutionary rate occur in the plastomes of parasitic plants. The holoparasitic plant Cistanche tubulosa of Orobanchaceae is an important medicinal resources that are distributed in arid areas. In this study, the complete plastome of C. tubulosa has been sequenced, assembled and analyzed. The total plastome of C. tubulosa was 75,375 bp in length, consisting of a pair of inverted repeats (IRs, 6,593 bp), a large single-copy region (LSC, 32,470 bp) and a small single-copy region (SSC, 29,719 bp). It contained 24 intact protein coding genes, nine pseudogenes, and 44 missing genes. In addition, all the protein-coding genes, which were related to photosynthesis and energy production, were pseudogenised or lost. Four rRNA genes and 24 tRNA genes were intact meanwhile five tRNA genes were missing. Phylogenetic tree indicated that C. tubulosa was closely related to C. phelypaea. Our results may improve understanding of the plastome organization, classification, and evolution of parasitic plants.

Yang, Q.; Wang, G.; Zhang, X.; Grecos, C., and Ren, P., 2020. Coastal image captioning. In: Jung, H.-S.; Lee, S.; Ryu, J.-H., and Cui, T. (eds.), Advances in Geospatial Research of Coastal Environments. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 102, pp. 145-150. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Coastal images convey immense semantic information of the corresponding coastal areas. This article presents a preliminary approach to coastal image captioning that describes salient semantic information of coastal images with accurate and meaningful sentences. Specifically, this article exploits a state-of-the-art method referred to as self-critical sequence training for coastal image captioning. Firstly, a convolutional neural network (CNN) produces fixed-length features from the coastal images. Secondly, the fixed-length features are fed into a long short-term memory (LSTM) to generate captions, i.e., the accurate and meaningful sentences. Finally, the LSTM is optimized in the context of reinforcement learning. Experimental evaluation on the Moye island remote sensing dataset validates the effectiveness.

This paper proposes a multi-scale deep residual network (MDRN) for removing clouds from remote sensing images. MDRN characterizes learning the residuals of cloud-free images and cloudy images instead of directly mapping the two parts. The learned residuals are subsequently integrated with the input cloudy images to generate the de-clouded results. The advantages of our MDRN are threefold. Firstly, we untangle the sparse details of cloudy images from the bases by a guided filter, making the learning focus on processing the textures and the cloud features in the details. Secondly, we employ multi-scale convolution units (MS-Conv), which have larger receptive fields than plain convolutions and assist in extracting representative features. Thirdly, we leverage deep residual learning to avoid performance degradation and relax learning burdens. Experimental results on the remote sensing image cloud removing dataset (RICE) validate the effectiveness of our MDRN.

The hippocampus is one of the two niches in mammalian brain with persistent neurogenesis into adulthood. The neurogenic capability of hippocampal neural stem cells (NSCs) declines with age but the molecular mechanisms of this process remain unknown. In this study, we found that fibroblast growth factors 13 (FGF13) is essential for the postnatal neurogenesis in mouse hippocampus and FGF13 deficiency impairs learning and memory. In particular, we found that the nuclear isoform of FGF13, FGF13A, is involved in the maintenance of NSCs and the suppression of neuron differentiation during postnatal hippocampal development. Furthermore, we found that FGF13A interacts with ARID1B, a unit of Brahma-associated factor chromatin remodeling complex, and suppresses the expression of neuron differentiation-associated genes through chromatin modification. Our results suggested that FGF13A is an important regulator for maintaining the self-renewal and neurogenic capacity of NSCs in postnatal hippocampus, revealing a novel epigenetic function of FGFs in neurogenesis.

Neuroinflammation in the central nervous system (CNS) is an important subject of neuroimmunological research. Emerging evidence suggests that neuroinflammation is a key player in various neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases and CNS injury. Neuroinflammation is a complex and well-orchestrated process by various groups of glial cells in CNS and peripheral immune cells. The cross-talks between various groups of glial cells in CNS neuroinflammation is an extremely complex and dynamic process which resembles a well-orchestrated symphony. However, the understanding of how glial cells interact with each other to shape the distinctive immune responses of the CNS remains limited. In this review, we will discuss the joint actions of glial cells in three phases of neuroinflammation, including initiation, progression, and prognosis, the three movements of the symphony, as the role of each type of glial cells in neuroinflammation depends on the nature of inflammatory cues and specific course of diseases. This perspective of glial cells in neuroinflammation might provide helpful clues to the development of the early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention of the various CNS diseases.

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000, the science of genomics rapidly developed. The application of genomics in medicinal plant research has become popular. In this study, we retrieved international research essays on medicinal plant genomics from 2000 to 2016 from the SCIE bibliographic database and performed data mining using the analysis platform CiteSpace and the analysis tool HistCite. The analysis revealed that studies conducted in China, India and the United States accounted for 29.3%, 19.2% and 10.8% of the total studies, respectively. The Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Kyung Hee University as the main research institutions, accounted for 6.1%, 5.1% and 1.5% of the total studies, respectively. Chinese scholar Shilin Chen has played an important role in this research area, putting forward a new discipline, called “herbgenomics”. Future forecasting analysis revealed that China will continue to be the leading country in medicinal plant genomics, Cameroon and Vienna would engage in this research, and genomics of medicinal plants will be more closely integrated with multi-omics technologies, such as metabolomics, transcriptomics, etc. In addition, gene editing technology may provide new approaches into genomic studies of medicinal plants.

Background Brain innate immunity is vital for maintaining normal brain functions. Immune homeostatic imbalances play pivotal roles in the pathogenesis of neurological diseases including Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the regulation of brain innate immunity and their significance in PD pathogenesis are still largely unknown. Methods Cre-inducible diphtheria toxin receptor (iDTR) and diphtheria toxin-mediated cell ablation was performed to investigate the impact of neuron-glial antigen 2 (NG2) glia on the brain innate immunity. RNA sequencing analysis was carried out to identify differentially expressed genes in mouse brain with ablated NG2 glia and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge. Neurotoxin 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-treated mice were used to evaluate neuroinflammatory response in the presence or absence of NG2 glia. The survival of dopaminergic neurons or glial cell activation was evaluated by immunohistochemistry. Co-cultures of NG2 glia and microglia were used to examine the influence of NG2 glia to microglial activation. Results We show that NG2 glia are required for the maintenance of immune homeostasis in the brain via transforming growth factor-β2 (TGF-β2)-TGF-β type II receptor (TGFBR2)-CX3C chemokine receptor 1 (CX3CR1) signaling, which suppresses the activation of microglia. We demonstrate that mice with ablated NG2 glia display a profound downregulation of the expression of microglia-specific signature genes and remarkable inflammatory response in the brain following exposure to endotoxin lipopolysaccharides. Gain- or loss-of-function studies show that NG2 glia-derived TGF-β2 and its receptor TGFBR2 in microglia are key regulators of the CX3CR1-modulated immune response. Furthermore, deficiency of NG2 glia contributes to neuroinflammation and nigral dopaminergic neuron loss in MPTP-induced mouse PD model. Conclusions These findings suggest that NG2 glia play a critical role in modulation of neuroinflammation and provide a compelling rationale for the development of new therapeutics for neurological disorders.

Summary: The hippocampus is one of two niches in the mammalian brain with persistent neurogenesis into adulthood. The neurogenic capacity of hippocampal neural stem cells (NSCs) declines with age, but the molecular mechanisms of this process remain unknown. In this study, we find that fibroblast growth factor 13 (FGF13) is essential for the post-natal neurogenesis in mouse hippocampus, and FGF13 deficiency impairs learning and memory. In particular, we find that FGF13A, the nuclear isoform of FGF13, is involved in the maintenance of NSCs and the suppression of neuronal differentiation during post-natal hippocampal development. Furthermore, we find that FGF13A interacts with ARID1B, a unit of Brahma-associated factor chromatin remodeling complex, and suppresses the expression of neuron differentiation-associated genes through chromatin modification. Our results suggest that FGF13A is an important regulator for maintaining the self-renewal and neurogenic capacity of NSCs in post-natal hippocampus, revealing an epigenomic regulatory function of FGFs in neurogenesis.

In this report we present results of theoretical analysis for the reaction mechanism involving a tungsten-germylyne complex with α, β-unsaturated ketones. Three different substituents, namely H, Me and CF3 in α-position of the unsaturated ketones have been selected to account for a variety of experimental observations. The computed results for different unsaturated ketones are in good agreement with experimental evidence and suggest that the formation of the final product can be achieved through steric as well as electronic effects.

Dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the midbrain ventral periaqueductal gray matter (PAG) play critical roles in various physiological and pathophysiological processes including sleep-wake rhyme, antinociception, and drug addiction. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying their development are poorly understood. Here, we showed that PAG DA neurons arose as early as E15.5 in mouse embryos. During the prenatal period, the majority of PAG DA neurons was distributed in the intermediate and caudal regions of the PAG. In the postnatal brain, approximate to 50% of PAG DA neurons were preferentially located in the caudal portion of the PAG. Moreover, transcription factor early B-cell factor 2 (Ebf2) was transiently expressed in a subset of DA neurons in embryonic ventral mesencephalon. Functional analysis revealed that loss of Ebf2 in vivo caused a marked reduction in the number of DA neurons in the midbrain PAG but not in the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area. Thus, Ebf2 is identified as a novel and important regulator selectively required for midbrain PAG DA neuron development. (c) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 75: 1282-1294, 2015

In order to solve the drawback of SNM algorithm, which leads to inefficiency in detecting precision on approximately duplicate records when multiple sources need to be integrated, the improved SNM algorithm based on the variety of edit distance and the variable window is proposed in this paper. According to the record pattern of edit distance and the size of edit distance, the approximately duplicate records of data are deleted to reduce the number of comparisons. Then we put forward the mechanism of variable window to solve the problem. Empirical results show that this algorithm can effectively solve the problem that the window is too big or too small to leak. The experiment shows that the improved SNM algorithm can solve many problems in the integration of multi-source, and it has obvious advantages in ensuring precision and boosting efficiency.

To investigate the feasibility of the anterolateral thigh free flap with the oblique branch in reconstructing the soft tissue defects of lower extremity.Between June 2009 and February 2013, 12 patients (including 7 males and 5 females) with soft tissue defects of lower extremity were treated with the anterolateral thigh free flap with the oblique branch, aged from 8 to 42 years (median, 32 years). The locations of soft tissue defect were the dorsum of the foot in 5 cases, the ankle and foot in 4 cases, the lower leg in 2 cases, and the distal foot in 1 case. All defects were associated with exposure of tendon and bone. The size of the wound was from 15 cm x 7 cm to 27 cm x 12 cm. The interval of injury and operation was 1 to 7 days (mean, 3.7 days). The anterolateral thigh flap was pedicled with only the oblique branch in 7 patients, and with the both descending branch and oblique branch in 5 patients, and the size of flap was from 17 cm x 9 cm to 30 cm x 15 cm. The donor sites were repaired by suture in 3 patients, and by skin graft in 9 patients.Distal skin flap necrosis occurred in 1 case, and was cured after dressing change and skin graft. The other flaps survived, and the donor site healed primarily. The follow-up time was from 10 months to 2 years (mean, 18 months). Thinning operation was performed in 3 cases, and the other flaps recovered pain and warm sensation with good appearance.It is a safe and effective method to reconstruct soft tissue defects of the lower extremity with the anterolateral thigh flap pedicled with the oblique branch.

A theoretical study of the N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC)-catalyzed cyclotetramerization of acrylates forming trisubstituted cyclopentenones indicates a mechanism through a key deoxy-Breslow intermediate generated from one molecule of NHC and two molecules of methyl acrylate (MA). Pathways involving different proton-transfer (α or β) and the role of a tert-butoxide ( (t) BuO(-)) group were investigated.

et al., Dopamine (DA) homeostasis is essential for a variety of brain activities. Dopamine transporter (DAT)-mediated DA reuptake is one of the most critical mechanisms for normal DA homeostasis. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of DAT activity in the brain remain poorly understood. Here we show that the Rho-family guanine nucleotide exchange factor protein Vav2 is required for DAT cell surface expression and transporter activity modulated by glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and its cognate receptor Ret. Mice deficient in either Vav2 or Ret displayed elevated DAT activity, which was accompanied by an increase in intracellular DA selectively in the nucleus accumbens. Vav2 â'/â' mice exposed to cocaine showed reduced DAT activity and diminished behavioral cocaine response. Our data demonstrate that Vav2 is a determinant of DAT trafficking in vivo and contributes to the maintenance of DA homeostasis in limbic DA neuron terminals., This work was supported by grants from the National Key Basic Research Program of China (2015CB553500, 2011CB504102), Natural Science Foundation of China (31123002, 31321091 and 30621130075), Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders (BIBD-PXM2013_014226_07_000084) and Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB01020300). X.R.B.'s work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (SAF2009-07172, SAF2012-3171, RD06/0020/0001 and RD12/0036/0002), the Castilla-León Autonomous Government (CSI101U13) and Spanish Association of Science Communication.