The Role of Siglecs in Immune Signaling Regulation and Immune Pathology / 中国生物化学与分子生物学报

Sialic acid-binding immunoglobulin-like lectins (Siglecs) are members of the immunoglobulin superfamily expressed in most white blood cells of the immune system. The Siglec is a kind of transmembrane proteins that can recognize sialic acid-containing ligands, and it is the most important subgroup of type I lectin. All Siglecs contain at least three domains, including the V-set Ig domain, C2-set Ig domain and transmembrane domain. Some Siglecs contain immune receptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motifs (ITIMs), which are used to transmit inhibitory signals and play an inhibitory role. There are also some Siglecs that do not contain intracellular domains, and they can transmit activation signals through basic amino acids in transmembrane domains to play an activation role. Siglecs not only participate in the regulation of activation, proliferation and apoptosis of immune cells, but also help the immune system to distinguish itself from non-itself by recognizing glycan ligands containing sialic acid. In recent years, studies have shown that Siglecs, as an immune checkpoint, play an important role in the immune regulation in human diseases such as cancer, asthma, allergy, Alzheimer’s disease and autoimmune diseases, and it has received extensive attention. Enhancing or blocking the interaction of sialic acid with Siglecs is an effective strategy for the treatment of cancer, infection, and other diseases. In this review, we describe the classification of Siglecs, their expression in different immune cells and their role in the regulation of immune cell signaling. Emphasis was placed on the role of Siglecs in disease and methods of targeting Siglecs for the treatment of human diseases.

Comparison of methods for enriching urine proteins / 生物工程学报

The abundance of proteins in human urine is low and easily to be masked by high-abundance proteins during mass spectrometry analysis. Development of efficient and highly selective enrichment methods is therefore a prerequisite for achieving deep coverage of urine protein markers. Notably, different experimental methods would affect the urine protein enrichment efficacy and the coverage of urine proteome. In this study, ultrafiltration, nitrocellulose membrane enrichment and saturated ammonium sulfate precipitation were used to process 10 mL urine samples from five healthy volunteers and five bladder cancer patients. The urine proteins were enriched and separate by SDS-PAGE to compare the purification efficiency of different methods. Moreover, the peptide identification effects of different purification methods were analyzed by mass spectrometry to determine the best method for enriching urine protein histones. Saturated ammonium sulfate precipitation method outperformed the ultrafiltration and the nitrocellulose membrane enrichment methods in terms of the protein enrichment efficacy and quality. The interference of highly abundant albumin was reduced, whereas the amount of low-abundance protein was increased, and the sensitivity of mass spectrometry identification was increased. The saturated ammonium sulfate precipitation method may be applied for large-scale urine processing for screening clinical diagnostic markers through proteomics.

A comparative analysis on risk communication between international and Chinese literature from the perspective of knowledge domain visualization

BACKGROUND@#The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) severely damaged and endangered people's lives at the end of 2019. Risk communication plays an important role in the response to it successfully, which has been appreciated by the World Health Organization. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of risk communication research is necessary, which can understand current research hotspots and reveal new trends.@*METHODS@#In this study, we collected 1134 international articles from the Web of Science database and 3983 Chinese articles from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database. Bibliometric and mapping knowledge domain analysis methods were used for temporal distribution analysis, cooperation network analysis, co-word network analysis, and burst detection analysis.@*RESULTS@#The first article in this field was published by western scholars earlier, while the first Chinese article in 2002. Research institutions mainly come from universities. The USA plays a key role in this field. Chinese scholars had a closer cooperation network, but there was less cooperation among domestic institutions. Risk perception, trust, risk management, and risk information had always been the research hotspots in this academic. Trust, sentiment research, and public risk events were essential directions for the future. There are 25 burst words for international articles, while 11 burst words for Chinese articles from 2000 to 2020.@*CONCLUSIONS@#In summary, both domestic and international researchers are concerned about risk communication, risk perception, trust, and risk information. International research on risk communication is systematic and comprehensive relatively. However, Chinese scholars take severe acute respiratory syndrome as the research background and reviewing foreign knowledge as the research starting point. With the purpose of practical and applied research based on a public emergency, the risk communication research lacks continuity in Chinese academy in the past years.

Deepen Teaching Reform for Course of Gene Engineering and Improve Teaching Quality / 微生物学通报

Gene engineering is the main course of biological engineering. It should be adapted to the demand of innovation spirit, practice ability and comprehensive quality of students. Educational reform of gene engineering conducted by constructing system of theory and practice, optimizing course teaching content, strengthening practice teaching content, using modern teaching technology, strengthening web course construction and improving teaching methods. We pay attention to impart specialty knowledge and learning methods to students. Its aim was to increase teaching effects and meet the demands of bioengineering specialty and qualified personal training in 21 century.

Value of measuring ankle brachial index for diagnosing peripheral arterial disease in Chinese patients with high cardiovascular risk / 中华心血管病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To evaluate the value of measuring ankle brachial index (ABI) for diagnosing peripheral arterial disease(PAD) compared with conventional digital subtraction angiography (DSA) as the reference standard.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A total of 383 consecutive inpatients (245 male, mean age 64.1 +/- 11.7 years) underwent both conventional DSA and ABI measurements.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The rate of statin intervention was 90.9%, ACEI 69.2%, antiplatelet 96.6% and beta-blockers 67.9%. The intravascular stenosis was classified into six degrees: normal, < 30%, 30% - 49%, 50% - 69%, 70% - 89% and > or = 90%. Compared to the traditional gold standard (DSA) in diagnosis PDA, the ABI value decreased in proportion to the severity of PAD (the ABI value was 1.08 +/- 0.11, 1.05 +/- 0.16, 0.99 +/- 0.17, 0.66 +/- 0.24, 0.55 +/- 0.28 and 0.54 +/- 0.00 respectively in the six ranks). There was a significant correlation between DSA and ABI in diagnosis PAD.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>ABI measurement is an accurate and reliable non-invasive alternative to conventional DSA in the assessment of lower extremity arteries in patients with peripheral arterial disease.</p>

Determining the relationship between coronary artery and coronary sinus and its tributaries using multislice computed tomography / 中华心血管病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To obtain the coronary artery and coronary sinus (CS) and its tributaries imaging with multislice computed tomography (MSCT), measure the distance between coronary artery and CS and its tributaries and analyze their spatial relationships.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The MSCT scans of 117 patients (67 men, 50 women, age 56 +/- 10 years) were obtained, 3D image reconstructed and the vessels courses evaluated. The concomitant distances and spatial relationships of the vessels were determined.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Right coronary artery domination was found in 107 cases (91.4%), left coronary artery domination in 7 cases (6.0%), and co-domination in 3 cases (2.6%). Left circumflex artery (LCX) was concomitant with CS or the great cardiac vein (GCV) in 81 cases (69.2%), intersected with left posterior vein in 62 cases (53.0%) and with middle cardiac vein (MCV) in 5 cases (4.3%), respectively. The dominant coronary artery branched out into the posterior descending artery (PDA) and the left posterior artery (LPA) in 112 cases (95.7%). PDA was concomitant with MCV in 93 cases (79.5%) and intersected with MCV in 44 cases (37.6%). LPA was intersected with MCV in 106 cases (90.6%), and concomitant with CS in 50 cases (42.7%).</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>MSCT is a reliable tool to visualize the relationship between coronary artery and CS and its tributaries. Owing to the multiple possibilities inherent to this technique, MSCT has broad potential for more clinical use.</p>

GFP reporter gene under the direction of chicken ovalbumin gene promoter expressed in the CHO cell and in the primary cell cultures of chicken oviduct / 生物工程学报

To reseach GFP reporter gene under the control of chick ovalbumin gene regulatory elements express in the CHO cell and in the primary cell cultures of chicken oviduct. 1.5kb fragment and 2.9kb fragment were amplicated by PCR method, two fragments were subeloned to manmalian expression vector pGFP-N2 by recombinant DNA technology, the CMV promoter was cut off from pGFP-N2, so two expression vectors were constructed, one is the P2.9koval-GFP including promoter, first exon, first intron of chicken ovalbumin gene, the other is the P1.5koval-GFP including first intron of chicken ovalbumin gene. Restriction enzyme digestion and DNA sequence analysis revealed that 5'upstream regions of ovalbumin gene were not only identical to those of the published chicken ovalbumin gene, but also were contained in the recombinant vector. They were transfected into the CHO cell and the primary cell cultures of chicken oviduct by Lipofectin, they were used for fluorescence detection. GFP protein existed in GFP transfected the CHO cell and the primary cell cultures of chicken oviduct. It is demonstrated that GFP reporter gene under the direction of chick ovalbumin gene promoter could be expressed in the CHO cell and in the primary cell cultures of chicken oviduct.