Long noncoding RNA LINC00662 functions as miRNA sponge to promote the prostate cancer tumorigenesis through targeting miR-34a.

OBJECTIVE: Mounting evidence indicates that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a critical role in the tumorigenesis. Up-regulation of lncRNA LINC00662 (LINC00662) has previously confirmed in several tumors. However, the study of LINC00662 in prostate cancer (PCa) is limited. Hence, to determine the expression pattern and function of LINC00662 in PCa. PATIENTS AND METHODS: LINC00662 expression was first detected in PCa cell lines and tissue samples by qRT-PCR. Based on follow-up data, correlations of LINC00662 expression and clinicopathological features, including overall survival, in PCa patients were evaluated. Cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and apoptosis were detected by CCK-8 assay, colony-forming assay, Wound-healing assay, transwell assay, and flow cytometry, respectively. Additionally, LINC00662-specific miRNA was further confirmed using the dual-luciferase reporter assay and RT-PCR. RESULTS: LINC00662 was significantly upregulated in PCa tissues and cell lines compared with adjacent normal tissue and a normal prostate epithelial cell line. Higher expression of LINC00662 was positively associated with distant metastasis and shorter overall survival. In addition, multivariate analysis revealed that tissue LINC00662 expression was confirmed to be an independent prognostic factor for PCa. Furthermore, LINC00662 silencing inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of PC-3 and LNCaP cells, and promoted apoptosis in vitro. Bioinformatics methods and luciferase reporter assay revealed the close link within miR-34a and 3'-untranslated region (UTR) of LINC00662 and further confirmed that LINC00662 could function as a sponge of miR-34a in PCa cells. Also, the results of RT-PCR showed that knockdown of LINC00662 suppressed the expression levels of miR-34a. CONCLUSIONS: The current results further enhanced our understanding of the effects of LINC00662 in PCa and may help to provide a new potential target for PCa treatment.

[Neurofeedback therapy in the treatment of tinnitus].

Neurofeedback therapy is a fast-growing field of tinnitus treatment, which is a new type of biofeedback therapy. In the past, the "muscle tone" and "blood flow" were used as feedback signals in biofeedback therapy to treat tinnitus, however there was no long-term follow-up report. Instead, neurofeedback therapy utilizes EEG (electroencephalogram) as the feedback signal, which is also called EEG biofeedback therapy. At present, most treatments of tinnitus only record subjective measures of patients as evaluation indicators, whereas neurofeedback therapy is more convincing for using comprehensive evaluation including changes of brain wave as objective indicators and subjective measures of patients. A significant number of tinnitus patients have varying degree of hearing loss. As neurofeedback therapy takes advantage of EEG as feedback signal that is delivered to the patients through visual information, it has unique advantages of being not affected by the degree of hearing loss compared to the sound masking or other sound treatment. Long-term follow-up results showed that the efficacy of neurofeedback therapy was stable after half a year of short-term treatment. This paper summarizes the progress of the various types of biofeedback therapy in the treatment of tinnitus, and focuses on the neurofeedback therapy for the mechanism, indication, process, efficacy evaluation, defect and prospect of neurofeedback therapy in tinnitus treatment in order to help promote the development of domestic clinical neurofeedback therapy in tinnitus.

Effect of serum high molecular weight adiponectin level on the occurrence of eclampsia during subsequent pregnancy in patients with primary pregnancy induced hypertension.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the effect of serum levels of high molecular weight adiponectin (HMWA) on the occurrence of eclampsia during subsequent pregnancy in patients with primary pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH). PATIENTS AND METHODS: Thirty patients with primary PIH (observation group) and sixty patients without primary PIH (control group) were consecutively selected. ELISA was used to measure the serum levels of HMWA. The differences in the occurrence of eclampsia during subsequent pregnancy between the two groups were compared. RESULTS: The serum levels of HMWA in the observation group were significantly lower than in the control group, and they decreased with increased severity of PIH (p < 0.05). In the observation group, the gestational age was lower than that of the control group, and the occurrence of cesarean section and maternal complications were increased. The neonatal weight and Apgar scores were lower than those of the control group, and the occurrence of neonatal complications was increased. The difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05). There were no differences in the time intervals between pregnancies in the two groups. The occurrence of PIH and eclampsia during subsequent pregnancy in the observation group was significantly higher than that in the control group (p < 0.05). According to receiver operating curve analysis, the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of serum HMWA level in predicting the occurrence of eclampsia during subsequent pregnancy were 85.6%, 74.8%, and 0.824 (95% CI = 0.811-0.936, p = 0.015), respectively. The critical value was 2.4 mg/l. CONCLUSIONS: Decreases of serum levels of HMWA in patients with primary PIH are closely related to the severity of PIH and the outcome of pregnancy, which has important predictive value for the occurrence of eclampsia during subsequent pregnancy.

Flow cytometer analysis of cell apoptosis of endometrial carcinoma with Wnt10b.

The aim of this study is to analyze the cell apoptosis of endometrial carcinoma (EC) with Wnt10b by Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) technology. AN3CA cell lines and Ishikawa-H-12 cell lines were taken as the in-vitro cell models to observe the influence of Wnt10b on key factors of Wnt signal pathway. Methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) was applied for the detection of cell proliferation while FACS was used for the detection of cell apoptosis. Data were analyzed using statistical software SPSS14.0. After the overexpression of Wntl0b in AN3CA cells, the apoptosis rate dropped significantly compared with the two control groups (p < 0.05); while the apoptosis rate increased significantly compared with the control groups (p < 0.01) after Wntl0b knock-off in Ishikawa3-H-12 cells. In normal endometrium, Wnt10b gene expression was negative, while that in EC cells was positive. It can be concluded that Wnt10b gene can promote EC cell proliferation and inhibit its apoptosis.

Non-nuclear activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 by 17ß- estradiol in endometrial cancer cells.

Why estrogen hyperstimulation can lead to endometrial carcinogenesis has not been fully clear yet. Non-nuclear action of estrogen has arised much attention of many experts. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 is a very important signal molecule, which plays vital role in endometrial canver. The present study is oriented to the problem whether estrogen can activate STAT3 by non-nuclear action in endometrial cancer cells. So, the levels of phosphorylated STAT3 (P-STAT3) and total STAT3 were examined by western blot in endometrial cancer cells including Ishikawa with rich-expressed estrogen receptor (ER) and HEC-1A with poor-expressed ER after stimulation with 1µM estradiol (E2) at different time points and at varied doses of E2 for optimal time. Inhibitory role of AG490 on activation of STAT3 induced by E2 was also tested. P-STAT3/STAT3 was used as a measure of activation of STAT3. We found that maximum P-STAT3/STAT3 took place at 15 min in both Ishikawa cells and HEC-1A cells. The activation of STAT3 elicited gradually with increasing doses of E2. AG490 stopped the activating STAT3 in the same dose-dependent manner in both endometrial cancer cells. The results demonstrate that E2 is able to activate STAT3 in both Ishikawa with rich-expressed ER and HEC-1A with poor-expressed ER endometrial cancer cells by non-nuclear action, which provides the preliminary laboratory basis for the probability of endometrial adenocarcinoma treatment with blockage of STAT3 signaling, especially for ER-poor endometrial adenocarcinoma.

Palm print image recovery and de-noising via multi-channel wavelet filter bank.

In this paper, a 3-channel wavelet transform method is introduced to recover palm print images following serious deformation. The deformation processing is actually a kind of digital re-sampling. A filter bank consisting of three filters is implemented for wavelet decomposition of the palm print image, and then a procedure of binary interpolation is performed after the image is reconstructed by another filter bank consisting of another three filters. The design of multi-channel wavelet filter bank is based on the Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF) method. Because the noise is caused by the Morie stripe, the images are further de-noised after the geometry deformation is addressed. Acceptable results have been obtained.

Finding keywords for intergenic and gene regions for human genome.

The analysis of functionally related sequences for conserved patterns is important for further research of different functional regions. This paper presents an analysis of genes and intergenic sequences from the point of view of linguistics analysis, where gene and intergenic regions are regarded as two different subjects written in the four-letter alphabet [A, C, G, T] and high-frequency simple sequences are taken as keywords. A measurement alpha[l(tau)] was introduced to describe the relative repeat ratio of simple sequences. Cutoff values were found for keywords selection. After eliminating "noise," 87 short sequences were selected as keywords for intergenic regions and 76 for gene regions.

SVM classification of human intergenic and gene sequences.

Despite constant improvement in prediction accuracy, gene-finding programs are still unable to provide automatic gene discovery with the desired correctness. This paper presents an analysis of gene and intergenic sequences from the point of view of language analysis, where gene and intergenic regions are regarded as two different subjects written in the four-letter alphabet {A,C,G,T}, and high frequency simple sequences are taken as keywords. A measurement alpha(l(tau)) was introduced to describe the relative repeat ratio of simple sequences. Threshold values were found for keyword selections. After eliminating 'noise', 178 short sequences were selected as keywords. DNA sequences are mapped to 178-dimensional Euclidean space, and SVM was used for prediction of gene regions. We showed by cross-validation that the program we developed could predict 93% of gene sequences with 7% false positives. When tested on a long genomic multi-gene sequence, our method improved nucleotide level specificity by 21%, and over 60% of predicted genes corresponded to actual genes.

A kinetic model for simulation of blood coagulation and inhibition in the intrinsic path.

A mathematical simulation pathway for the generation of thrombin has been developed with various assumptions made of kinetic rate laws and their summation for reactions involving the activation of factors VIII, IX, X and V and protein C in the formation of thrombin. The object of the computational modelling study is to stimulate the activation and inhibition of blood coagulation. The level of complexity and assumed parameters makes conclusions uncertain. However, an interesting outcome is that kinetic rates may show oscillation behavior under particular high levels of protein C feedback inhibition. The model, which permits the assessment of the reaction over a broad range of conditions, would defy quantitative practical use, but could have predictive value as a qualitative descriptor of coagulation.

Torque properties of a rat oesophagus for physiological and diabetic conditions.

In this paper the torque of an oesophagus is studied for physiological and diabetic conditions. Since the function of the oesophagus is mainly mechanical, this work is focused on providing quantitative measurement of the passive biomechanical properties of the oesophagus torque. The oesophagus was treated as a membrane when calculating the stress and strain. The torque versus twist-angle relation was approximated to be linear at a specified pressure and longitudinal stretch ratio. Thus, the shear modulus can be computed by the torque, twist angle and polar moment of inertia in this state. The shear modulus varies greatly with the changing inflation pressure and longitudinal stretch ratio. When the longitudinal stretch ratio or transmural pressure is constant, the shear modulus is increased after 28 days of diabetes.

The kinetic model and simulation of blood coagulation--the kinetic influence of activated protein C.

The paper described a limited part of the coagulation pathway, and in particular the inhibitory effects of activated protein C in the context of thrombin production. This is a computational modeling study with various assumption made of kinetic rates laws and their summation. The level of complexity and assumed parameters makes conclusions uncertain. However, an interesting outcome is that kinetic reaction rates may show oscillation behavior under particular, high levels of protein C feedback inhibition. The model would defy quantitative practical use, but could have predictive value as a qualitative descriptor of coagulation.

Role of phosphate and kinetic characteristics of complete iron release from native pig spleen ferritin-Fe.

The kinetics for complete iron release showing biphasic behavior from pig spleen ferritin-Fe (PSFF) was measured by spectrophotometry. The native core within the PSFF shell consisted of 1682 hydroxide Fe3+ and 13 phosphate molecules. Inhibition kinetics for complete iron release was measure by differential spectrophotometry in the presence of phosphate; the process was clearly divided into two phases involving a first-order reaction at an increasing rate of 46.5 Fe3+/PSFF/min on the surface of the iron core and a zero-order reaction at a decreasing rate of 6.67 Fe3+/PSFF/min inside the core. The kinetic equation [C(PSFF-Fe3+)max - C(PSFF-Fe3+)t](1/2) = Tmax - Tt gives the transition time between the two rates and represents the complex kinetic characteristics. The rate was directly accelerated twofold by a mixed reducer of dithionite and ascorbic acid. These results suggest that the channel of the PSFF shell may carry out multiple functions for iron metabolism and storage and that the phosphate strongly affects the rate of iron release.