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BACKGROUND Infectious disease-specific health literacy (IDSHL) has become an important determinant of infectious disease incidence. However, there is currently no concrete health education invention program to improve IDSHL using a WeChat public account. OBJECTIVE The aims of this study were as follows: 1) To determine the IDSHL of the population in Zhejiang, China; (2) To develop a health education program for the improvement of IDSHL using a WeChat public account; (3) To evaluate the effectiveness of the health education program that was implemented in the prevention of infectious disease outbreaks. METHODS A multiple-stage stratified random sampling technique was used to select study participants, who were further divided randomly into two groups: the intervention and control groups. From July 2014 to January 2015, a WeChat-based health education intervention program was carried out on the intervention group. Standardized questionnaires were used to measure the level and score of IDSHL before and after intervention. RESULTS A total 3,001 residents participated in the baseline survey of our study. At baseline, participant IDSHL rates were 73.29% and 72.12% for the intervention and control group, respectively. After 7 months of intervention, 90% of participants (n=2704) returned to complete the second survey. After intervention, there were significant improvements in the IDSHL of participants in both the intervention and control groups (2=135.89, P CONCLUSIONS he health education intervention program using a WeChat public account proved to be effective, feasible, and well-accepted as a means to improve the IDSHL of the general population. In the future, this health education intervention program can be used as a reference for prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.

By bonding the sub-wavelength-thick lithium niobate (LiNbO3) layer to high-phase-velocity (vp) substrates, such as Si, the shear-horizontal (SH) modes no longer couple with the bulk modes leaking into substrates. As the propagation loss is no longer the major concern for these types of nonleaky SH wave devices, the YX-LiNbO3 with a low rotation angle providing ultra-large coupling coefficient (keff2) can be used. In addition, by overlaying a high-velocity layer such as AlN on top of LiNbO3/Si, the vp of the SH wave can be significantly enhanced at a small cost of keff2. By a careful design of the stack, both the wide-band spurious (Lamb wave) and near-band spurious (Rayleigh wave) are suppressed successfully. This paper focuses on the design of layered substrate not only to optimize its resonance characteristics—series frequency (fs), quality factor (Q), keff2, and temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF)—but also for eliminating the out-of-band spurious responses. The optimized substrate design demonstrates the minimal propagation loss, high fs of 3 GHz, large keff2 of 14.4% and a spurious-free response at 0–6 GHz. These novel nonleaky SH wave devices can potentially enable the low loss and wideband processing functions, which is promising for the 5G/6G radio frequency (RF) communication systems.

In this article, a new high quality factor ( Q ) inductor with piezoacoustic plate acoustic wave (PAW) resonators is presented. As indicated by the investigation of the acoustic wave propagation characteristics and transducer materials, the coupling coefficient ( k

For real-time millimeter-wave (MMW) imaging applications, spatially 2-D sparse sampling is one of the most promising techniques to reduce the heavy cost of signal acquisition. Therefore, in this article, we develop a new MMW synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sparse imaging method by establishing a 2-D pseudorandom spiral-sampling pattern. The method consists of two phases: sparse sampling-pattern design and sparse-imaging processing. The sparse sampling-pattern design is modeled as an optimization programming problem, in which the initial sampling pattern is a classical Archimedes spiral, and then, the number of samples per cycle is adjusted by coming up with a modified sigmoid function. This function is employed to increase the angular aperiodicity and randomness over the whole planar aperture. For sparse-imaging processing, a singular value thresholding (SVT) algorithm is applied to reconstruct the complete echo from partial samples observed by sparse sampling, and then, the inversion can be performed via the traditional imaging algorithms. In particular, a performance-guarantee condition of SVT is introduced to control the minimum number of samples, which bridges the relationship between pattern optimization and reconstruction performance. Our motivation is to answer what the undersampling pattern is and to estimate the extent to which the number of samples can be reduced by the current sparse imaging method. Finally, simulations and experiments validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed sampling pattern, and the imaging results further demonstrate that our method with partially observed samples can offer the performance comparable to dense sampling.

Background This study investigated an association between schizoid tendencies and aggressive behaviors in Chinese adolescents, and explored the underlying mechanism. Methods The data of 3094 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years were collected from an epidemiological survey in China. All the subjects or their parents completed the Achenbach’s Child Behavior Checklist, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, and the Adolescent Self-rating Life Event Checklist (ASLEC). Results Relative to the non-schizoid group, adolescents with schizoid tendencies (male or female) showed significantly higher scores for aggressive behaviors, emotional abuse, and ASLEC. Regarding females only, those with schizoid tendencies had significantly higher (lower) scores for physical abuse and emotional neglect (physical neglect). The aggressive behaviors score was predicted by scores for schizoid tendencies (βmale = 0.620, βfemale = 0.638, both P male = 0.125, βfemale = 0.061, both P P = 0.021]; females: emotional abuse and sexual abuse [β = 0.118 and − 0.062, both P P = 0.023). Conclusions Schizoid tendencies are associated with aggressive behaviors among Chinese adolescents. Recent life events and childhood trauma mediated an association between schizoid tendencies and aggressive behaviors. The interaction between childhood trauma and recent life events affected aggressive behaviors in females. Aggressive behaviors in adolescents may be ameliorated by reducing childhood trauma and life events.

School bullying has attracted worldwide attention for its adverse outcomes; however, there is still a lack of research among college students. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of school bullying victimization and the associated factors among Chinese college students.8098 Chinese college students from two universities in Hunan province were recruited in this cross-sectional study, and data on participants' demographic information, bullying history, suicidal behaviors, anxiety (Self-Rating Anxiety Scale) and depression (Self-reporting Depression Scale) were collected. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the independent correlates of school bullying.The prevalence of school bullying was 8.03% in our study. Gender (OR,0.792;95%CI[0.660,0.950]; p = 0.012); depression (OR,1.979; 95%CI[1.359,2.883]; p 0.001); anxiety (OR,1.996; 95%CI[1.388, 2.869]; p 0.001); suicidal ideation (OR,1.353;95%CI[1.087,1.684]; p = 0.007); suicide attempts (OR,1.772;95%CI[1.306,2.403]; p 0.001); family income between 30,000 and 70,000/year (yuan) (OR,0.763;95% CI[0.627,0.929]; p = 0.007) and family income more than 70,000/year (yuan) (OR,0.578;95%CI[0.461,0.725]; p 0.001) were independent correlates of school bullying. The bullying score was positively correlated with physical or mental disorder history, family history of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, suicide plans, suicide attempts, anxiety, depression, smoking and drinking alcohol (all p 0.05), and negatively correlated with right-handedness, good relationship with parents and family income (all p 0.05).No causal relationship could be drawn due to the cross-sectional design.School bullying is quite common among college students. In order to improve students' mental health and prevent suicide, we should pay attention to the negative effects of bullying victimization such as depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors and so on, apart from putting in place anti-bullying interventions.

Background: This study investigated an association between schizoid and aggressive behaviors in Chinese adolescents, and the influences of childhood trauma and adverse life events on this association.Methods: The cross-sectional data of 3094 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years was collected from an epidemiological survey of child and adolescent mental disorders in Hunan Province, China. All these subjects completed the Achenbach’s Child Behavior Checklist, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form, and the Adolescent Self-rating Life Event Checklist. Use independent-sample t-test, Pearson’s correlation analysis, linear regression, mediation analysis and moderation analysis for data analysis.Results: The regression analysis showed that schizoid (βmale = 0.618, βfemale = 0.637, both P < 0.001) and adverse life events (βmale = 0.113, βfemale = 0.057, all P < 0.01) predicted aggressive behaviors. In addition, childhood trauma predicted aggressive behaviors (female: emotional abuse and sexual abuse (β = 0.118 and –0.062, both P < 0.01). Adverse Life events mediated the association between schizoid and aggressive behaviors in male and female adolescents. Emotional neglect in boys, and emotional abuse and sexual abuse in girls mediated the association. Only in female adolescents, the interaction between childhood trauma and life events affected the association between schizoid and aggressive behaviors (P = 0.023).Conclusions: Schizoid are associated with aggressive behaviors in Chinese adolescents. Life events and childhood trauma mediated the association between schizoid and aggressive behaviors, and the interaction between childhood trauma and life events affected girls’ aggressive behaviors. Hence, reducing childhood trauma and adverse life events can reduce the risk of aggressive behaviors in adolescents.

Objective Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) involves kidney damage, and the inflammasome-caspase-1 axis has been demonstrated to promote renal pathogenesis. The present study was designed to explore the function of the Absent in Melanoma 2 (Aim2) protein in SLE. Methods Female wild-type Aim2-/- , Aim2-/- Ifnar1-/- , Aim2-/- Rag1-/- , and Asc-/- mice ages 8-10 weeks received 1 intraperitoneal injection of 500 μl pristane or saline, and survival of mice was monitored twice a week for 6 months. Results The absence of Aim2, but not Asc, led to enhanced SLE in mice that received pristane treatment. Increased immune cell infiltration and type I interferon (IFN) signatures in the kidneys of Aim2-/- mice coincided with severity of lupus, which was alleviated by blockade of Ifnar1-mediated signal. Adaptive immune cells were also involved in the glomerular lesions of Aim2-/- mice after pristane challenge. Importantly, even in the absence of pristane, plasmacytoid dendritic cells in the kidneys of Aim2-/- mice were significantly increased compared to control animals. Accordingly, transcriptome analysis revealed that Aim2 deficiency led to enhanced expression of type I IFN-induced genes in the kidneys even at an early developmental stage. Mechanistically, Aim2 bound ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme 2i (Ube2i), which mediates sumoylation-based suppression of type I IFN expression deficiency of Aim2 decreased cellular sumoylation, resulting in an augmented type I IFN signature and kidney pathogenesis. Conclusion The present study demonstrates a critical role for Aim2 in an optimal Ube2i-mediated sumoylation-based suppression of type I IFN generation and development of SLE. As such, the Aim2-Ube2i axis can thus be a novel target for intervention in SLE.

The thermal stabilization techniques for the fundamental (SH 0 ) Plate acoustic wave (PAW) resonators based on LiNbO 3 are theoretically investigated in this paper. The SH 0 mode offers an ultra-large coupling coefficient (k2) at a certain crystal cut angle and normalized plate thickness, but its poor temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) hinders its application in RF systems and needs further improvement urgently. By adding SiO 2 with positive TCF to the LiNbO 3 plate, a robust temperature compensation approach can be achieved for the SH 0 resonators on LiNbO 3 /SiO 2 bilayer and SiO 2 /LiNbO 3 /SiO 2 sandwiched structures. The propagation characteristics of the SH 0 wave propagating in the layered medium are carefully investigated. Despite the trade-off between TCF and k2, the SiO 2 /LiNbO 3 /SiO 2 structure provides large k2 and near-zero TCF for wider thickness combinations. Furthermore, the periodic structure dispersion of the simplest zero-TCF stack is provided and the critical threshold IDT thickness is given.

Salinity is a crucial environmental stress that severely affects fish growth and survival. Under environmental stress, DNA methylation plays an important role in gene expression and genome function. To better understand the epigenetic regulation mechanism of igf2 under low salinity stress, we analyzed the DNA methylation at 5′UTR, exon1, intron1, and exon2, and analyzed the relationship of DNA methylation with mRNA abundance as well as the special single CpG sites methylation patterns of igf2 in the liver of half smooth tongue sole under low salinity (15) for 0, 7, and 60 d. When exposed to low salinity, DNA methylation at 5′UTR and exon2 remained stable, while it was up-regulated firstly and then down-regulated at exon1 and intron1. Some single CpG sites of igf2 associated with low salinity, and most of these sites with significantly changed methylation levels (P 0.05) are located in intron1 area. The discrepant variation of single CpG sites methylation levels and igf2 expression further revealed that females and males showed different response to low salinity. Remarkably, the 38-CpG site of intron1 servers as a sexual marker. Additionally, our integrative analysis demonstrated that regional DNA of igf2 methylation had highly complex interplay on gene expression. The single CpG sites in intron1 were indispensable epigenetic markers under external environmental stress. Above all, to resist the low salinity stress, half smooth tongue sole liver can regulate the expression of igf2 through methylation of CpG sites in intron1.

Myomaker is a membrane protein that plays a crucial role in the fusion of myoblasts during muscle growth. DNA methylation, a significant factor, regulates gene expression. The aim of this study was to examine the methylation and mRNA expression patterns of the myomaker gene during 8 different postnatal developmental stages in the Japanese flounder (L: 7 days post hatch (dph); M1: 21 dph; M2: 28 dph; M3: 35 dph; J1: 90 dph; J2: 180 dph; A1: 24 months; A2: 36 months). Muscle tissue samples were taken from Japanese flounder at different postnatal development stages to measure the extent of DNA methylation and gene expression. Methylation level in the promoter and exon 1 of myomaker was measured using bisulfite sequencing, and the relative expression of myomaker during each developmental stage was measured by quantitative PCR. The relative expression levels of myomaker were up-regulated from stages L to M2, M3 to J2, and methylation of myomaker was negatively correlated with mRNA expression. Furthermore, the CpG site located at −26 bp in the promoter was the lowest methylated region in all developmental stages. These results offer a basis for understanding the mechanism by which myomaker regulates muscle formation during postnatal development.

To relieve the system cost in densely sampling when applying the millimeter-wave (MMW) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technique for imaging applications, an MMW sparse imaging method is presented by the combination of the under-sampling scheme in space and the following sparse imaging algorithm. Different from the requirement on sub-wavelength sampling interval by Nyquist law, the system only needs to collect a random subset of spatial samples. To transform the spatial samples into wavenumber domain, a sparse range migration algorithm (SRMA) is proposed to realize MMW sparse imaging by embedding the matrix completion (MC) technique into classical RMA. In light of the relationship of Fourier transform between the scattering coefficients and the wavenumber-domain echo, the proposed algorithm utilizes the atomic norm minimization to fulfill the MC from the small set of wavenumber-domain entries to their full data matrix. The experiments are conducted by a wideband MMW transceiver mounted on a linear trajectory for imaging two specimens with different kinds of cover. Their clear imaging contrast of azimuth-range profiles is obtained through SRMA under different under-sampling conditions and RMA with fully sampled data, and verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Host innate immune system is critical for combating invading microbes including Influenza A virus (IAV). As an important arm of the innate immunity, the NLRP3 inflammasome has been found essential for protecting host against IAV challenge, while the mechanism remained elusive. Here we found that mice carrying a gain-of-function mutation in the Nlrp3 gene (Nlrp3R258W) are strongly resistant to IAV infection. Upon H1N1 IAV infection, the Nlrp3R258W mice exhibited decreased weight loss, increased survival rate and attenuated lung damage compared with WT littermate controls. Mechanistically, the resistance of Nlrp3R258W mice to IAV infection was dependent on IL-1β-mediated neutrophil recruitment. Upon IAV infection, mice carrying the Nlrp3R258W mutation produced more IL-1β than WT mice in the lung, which enhanced neutrophil recruitment locally. The recruited neutrophils facilitated IAV clearance, so that the viral load in Nlrp3R258W mice was lower than that in control mice. Conversely, neutrophil depletion in Nlrp3R258W mice compromised IAV clearance. Taken together, our results demonstrate a previously undescribed mechanism by which hyperactivation of the NLRP3 Inflammasome protects mice from IAV infection through IL-1β mediated neutrophil recruitment, thus suggest that positively fine tuning the physiological function of NLRP3 inflammasome can be beneficial for a mammalian host against IAV challenge.

The bare silica nanoparticles (SiO2 NPs) synthesized by Stober method is very hydrophilic and chemically inert, which may suffer from particles aggregation and low biocompatibility when they are used in physiological media. For this case, we attempted to conduct surface functionalization of SiO2 NPs by Ugi multicomponent reaction, using amphiphilic amidic alginate derivative (AAD) as the modifier. The successful synthesis of amidic alginate derivative-functionalized silica nanoparticles (AAD-SiO2 NPs) was confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy, 1H NMR spectrometer, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and thermal gravimetric analysis. The covalent bonding of alginate derivative onto the surface of SiO2 NPs increased their average diameter and zeta potential, which effectively improved their colloidal stability in PBS. Additionally, surface tension measurements and cell studies results revealed that the resultant AAD-SiO2 NPs possessed relatively high surface activity and cytocompatibility, which exhibited great potential in the biomedical field.

Objective To examine the impacts of social integration and loneliness on the mental health of humanitarian migrants (HMs) in Australia over time. Methods A total of 1,723 HMs who held permanent visas from the first to third waves (2013-2016) of a longitudinal study in Australia (Building a New Life in Australia) were included in the study. Dependent variables included poor general health, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe mental illness (SMI). Predictors were social integration stressors and loneliness. We used generalised linear mixed models to assess impacts of the changing status of social integration and loneliness on dependent variables over time. Results HMs with increased social integration stressors reported poor general health (aOR:1.56, 95%CI:1.19-2.03); PTSD (aOR:1.67; 95%CI: 1.32-2.13); and SMI (aOR: 1.46; 95%CI: 1.15-1.86) over time when compared to those without stressors. Increased loneliness during resettlement was also associated with poor general health (aOR: 1.56; 95%CI:1.28-1.91); PTSD (aOR: 1.57; 95%CI: 1.28-1.93) and SMI (aOR: 1.59; 95%CI: 1.31-1.94). HMs who reported overcoming loneliness (aOR:1.50, 95%CI: 1.24-1.83 for SMI and aOR:1.51; 95%CI: 1.22-1.86 for PTSD) and persistent loneliness (aOR:1.99; 95%CI: 1.51-2.61 for SMI) reported poorer mental health over time than those who did not report loneliness. Implications for public health: Culturally competent settlement services addressing social integration stressors and loneliness are required to improve the mental health of humanitarian migrants.

With the rapid development of 5G technology, acoustic wave filters with large bandwidths are urgently required to deal with the explosive increase in data traffic. Recently, there is extensive attention paid to shear-horizontal (SH) surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators based on lithium niobate (LiNbO3) substrates, thanks to its large effective coupling coefficient ( k2eff). However, because of the bulk acoustic wave (BAW) energy radiation into the LiNbO3 substrate, it is very challenging to obtain a high quality factor ( Q) for SH-SAW resonators. In this study, a 30° YX-LiNbO3/SiO2/Si SAW resonator with the SH mode is proposed to achieve a large coupling and a high Q simultaneously. By bonding a LiNbO3 thin film onto a thermally oxidized Si(100) substrate, the velocity mismatch between the piezoelectric layer and the SiO2/Si substrate could significantly reduce the BAW energy leakage. Finite element method simulation is employed to optimize the cut angle of the LiNbO3 film and the thickness of each layer. The fabricated SH-SAW resonators with a resonant frequency of 924 MHz yield a k2eff of 24.8% and a maximum of Bode- Q (Bode- Qmax) of 1107. In comparison with the previously reported same-type SAW resonators, a higher Bode- Qmax is demonstrated in this work when their k2eff is larger than 20%, providing a potential solution to enable wideband tunable filters in the 5G communication system.

Conventional multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique applied into the millimeter-wave and terahertz (THz) imaging applications would suffer from the large number of array elements due to their short wavelengths. In this paper, to reduce the array elements for azimuth-range imaging, a 1-D sparse MIMO array is introduced that combines with the wideband emitted signal to achieve 2-D imaging in the near field. Provided with these greatly reduced spatial samples measured by the sparse array, an off-the-grid sparse imaging algorithm is proposed to recover the arbitrarily distributed scatterers in a 2-D plane. In particular, the proposed approach takes advantages of the MIMO geometry and matrix pencil (MP) method. It utilizes the echo in wave-number domain which is featured by the MIMO geometry to make a lossless dimension reduction from the 2-D unknown position of each scatterer into a local 1-D frequency. After estimating those local 1-D frequencies by the MP method, an MIMO-structure-determined filter is developed to fulfill the inverse mapping and finally achieve imaging without the pairing problem. Simulations and experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Understanding the time-varying association of pre-migration and post-migration stressors in refugees' mental health could help in designing tailored health promotion services at different resettlement stages and improving the efficiency of resource allocation. In this study, we explored these time-varying associations.We used data from the first four waves (October, 2013, to February, 2017) of a national refugee-based longitudinal study, the Building a New Life in Australia (BNLA) project. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and high risk of severe mental illness (HR-SMI) were used to assess mental health. The independent variables included the number of potentially traumatic events experienced during the pre-migration process, and a range of post-migration stressors. We used logistic regression models to analyse the relative importance of variables and time-varying associations between the pre-migration potentially traumatic events, post-migration resettlement stressors, and refugees' mental health. Analyses were stratified by gender, and sociodemographic covariates included age, marital status, education level, country of birth, and weekly income.2399 participants were surveyed in Wave 1 of the BNLA project in 2013-14, of whom 2009 (83·7%) responded in Wave 2 in 2014-15, 1894 (78·9%) in Wave 3 in 2015-16, and 1929 (80·4%) in Wave 4 in 2016-17. The three most important factors associated with mental health in each wave differed for male and female refugees, but the socioeconomic stressors of loneliness and adjustment to life in Australia were consistently prominent. Positive associations between socioeconomic stressors and mental ill-health were found for both genders, with a peak at Wave 2 (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] among men, 1·60 [95% CI 1·26-2·03], p=0.0001 for PTSD; AOR 1·86 [1·35-2·55], p=0·0001 for HR-SMI; and among women, AOR 1·81 [1·27-2·57], p=0·0009 for PTSD; AOR 2·24 [1·49-3·38], p=0·0001 for HR-SMI). Associations between loneliness and mental health fluctuated, but were significant for both genders in Wave 4 (among men, AOR 1·90 [1·21-2·99], p=0·0051 for PTSD; AOR 3·70 [2·18-6·27], p0·0001 for HR-SMI; and among women, AOR 3·65 [2·08-6·39], p0·0001 for PTSD; AOR 3·68 [2·02-6·69], p0·0001 for HR-SMI). The association between difficulties in adjustment to life in Australia and male refugees' mental ill-health increased continuously during the resettlement period.Gender-specific and time-sensitive services should be considered to improve refugees' mental health. For both genders, improved economic conditions that complement social security benefits deserve attention and are relevant throughout the resettlement process. At the later stage of resettlement, services to reduce loneliness could be carried out, and reducing stressors related to adjustment to life in the host country is especially needed for male refugees.None.

Purpose Long noncoding RNA PVT1 is dysregulated in some human tumors and has been found to increase the risk of tumor progression and poor prognosis. This study aimed to reanalyze the effect of PVT1 on tumorous prognosis. Materials and methods The effect of PVT1 on metastasis and survival were analyzed by univariate logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards model for 32 types of cancer in the Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA), and the relationship between PVT1 level and expression of relative genes was assessed by Pearson correlation analysis. RevMan5.3 and STATA14.0 were used to estimate pooled effects of PVT1 on cancer prognosis with data from TCGA and published studies. Results In TCGA data, high PVT1 expression tended to increase the risk of TNM progression and decreased the overall survival (OS) time in most of cancers. The pooled effect of PVT1 on TNM (pooled-OR=1.46, 95% CI: 1.29–1.65) and OS (pooled HR=1.32, 95% CI: 1.22–1.43), calculated from 37 and 48 cohorts, identified that high PVT1 expression promoted the metastasis and poor prognosis of cancer. Furthermore, the pooled ORs of 2.77 (95% CI: 1.65–4.66), 4.32 (95% CI: 1.99–9.36), 1.35 (95% CI: 1.01–1.80), 1.62 (95% CI: 1.21–2.18) and 1.48 (95% CI: 1.02–2.15) provided evidence that PVT1 played a role in lymph node metastasis, depth of invasion, distant metastasis, differentiation and lymphatic invasion; while the expression of 24 identified target genes was significantly associated with PVT1 level, and high PVT1 expression dependently decreased the OS time under the influence of co-expression genes (OR=1.29, 95% CI: 1.25–1.32) in high-throughput RNA sequencing merging data. In addition, the expression of PVT1 could be upregulated by smoking, with the pooled OR being 1.09 (95% CI 1.01–1.16). Conclusion PVT1 is a dependent biomarker for tumorous prognosis surveillance. However, the reference value of PVT1 needs further study.

Follistatin (Fst) is a hyperplasia factor that plays a crucial role in muscle development. DNA methylation, a significant process, regulates gene expression. The aim of our study is to examine the DNA methylation and expression patterns of Fst gene at five different development stages of Japanese flounder (stage A, 7 dph; stage B, 90 dph; stage C, about 180 dph; stage D, about 24 months; stage E, about 36 months). The muscle tissue of Japanese flounder was obtained at different development stages in this experiment. DNA methylation levels in the promoter and exon 2 of Fst were determined by bisulfite sequencing, and the relative expression of the Fst gene at the five stages was measured by quantitative PCR. The results showed that the lowest methylation level was at stage A and the highest methylation level was at stage B. Moreover, the highest expression level of the Fst gene was observed at stage A. The mRNA abundance was negatively correlated with DNA methylation level. Three CpG islands in the promoter region and three CpG islands in exon 2 of Fst were found in the binding sequence of the putative transcription factor. These results offered a theoretical basis for the mechanism of Fst gene regulation to muscle development at different development stages.