Identification of membrane protein types via deep residual hypergraph neural network.

A membrane protein's functions are significantly associated with its type, so it is crucial to identify the types of membrane proteins. Conventional computational methods for identifying the species of membrane proteins tend to ignore two issues: High-order correlation among membrane proteins and the scenarios of multi-modal representations of membrane proteins, which leads to information loss. To tackle those two issues, we proposed a deep residual hypergraph neural network (DRHGNN), which enhances the hypergraph neural network (HGNN) with initial residual and identity mapping in this paper. We carried out extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets of membrane proteins. In the meantime, we compared the DRHGNN with recently developed advanced methods. Experimental results showed the better performance of DRHGNN on the membrane protein classification task on four datasets. Experiments also showed that DRHGNN can handle the over-smoothing issue with the increase of the number of model layers compared with HGNN. The code is available at https://github.com/yunfighting/Identification-of-Membrane-Protein-Types-via-deep-residual-hypergraph-neural-network.

Tumor Microenvironment-Responsive Reagent DFS@HKUST-1 for Photoacoustic Imaging-Guided Multimethod Therapy.

Although multimethod therapy has shown great promise for effective cancer treatment, it is still a great challenge to develop simple and effective strategies to construct multifunctional therapeutic reagents. According to the characteristics of the tumor microenvironment, such as a mild acidic environment and overexpression of H2O2, an intelligent therapeutic reagent with photoacoustic (PA) imaging-guided photothermal therapy, chemodynamic therapy, and in situ chemotherapy was constructed by simply loading disulfiram (DSF) in a Cu-based porous metal-organic framework (HKUST-1). The resultant material DFS@HKUST-1 shows near-infrared adsorption around 600-900 nm and effective photoacoustic imaging properties and photothermal conversion efficiency upon 808 nm irradiation. Besides, after DFS@HKUST-1 is enriched in the tumor, the acidic environment of the tumor will slowly trigger the decomposition of HKUST-1, leading to the release of Cu2+ ions to react with DSF and endogenous H2O2 to generate the Cu/DSF complex (CuET) and cytotoxic •OH for chemotherapy and chemodynamic therapy, respectively. Therefore, DFS@HKUST-1 can serve as a promising tumor microenvironment response therapeutic reagent for photoacoustic imaging-guided multimethod therapy.

Initial studies on a novel filtering-type intra-vas device in male dogs.

BACKGROUND: To relieve the side effects induced by the complete obstruction of the vas deferens, we created a filtering-type intra-vas device (IVD) which is made of materials composed of nano-SiO(2)-copper complex cross-linking polymer composites. STUDY DESIGN: Eight male beagle dogs were grouped into nonimplanted control group and IVD-implanted group. We tested the efficacy of the sperm filtering effect of the new IVD material for 12 months and examined the influence of the IVD materials on the cells of the vas deferens, epididymis and testis. RESULTS: The densities of sperm were reduced significantly after the IVD was implanted; no motile sperm were found after the third month. No obvious morphological changes were found in the cells of the vas deferens, epididymis and testis in the IVD-implanted group. CONCLUSIONS: The filtering-type nano-SiO(2)-copper complex/polymer composite IVD is able to filter the sperm of the male dogs, and the IVD material did not cause obvious damage to the cells of the male reproductive organs after 1 year of implantation.

Effect of sildenafil citrate on penile erection of rhesus macaques.

AIM: To examine the effect of sildenafil citrate on penile erection of male rhesus macaque. METHODS: Twenty Macaca mulatta were divided into the sildenafil treated and the control groups of 10 animals each. The penile size, the corpus cavernosal electromyogram (EMG) and the intra-corpus cavernosal pressure (ICP) were determined. RESULTS: The diameter of penis and the ICP were significantly increased and the corpus cavernosal EMG significantly reduced in the sildenafil group. CONCLUSION: Sildenafil citrate increases the penile size and ICP and reduces the corpus cavernosal EMG in male rhesus macaque.

[Effect of sildenafil ciltrate on the sexual activities of male rats].

OBJECTIVE: To obtain related pharmacodynamic data for the clinical experiment by observing the sexual activities of male rats after using sildenafil ciltrate through stomach irrigation. METHODS: Forty male Sprague-Dawley rats were distributed into 4 groups with different dosages (control with distilled water, low dosage: 0.08%, medium dosage: 0.24% and high dosage: 0.72%). After the male Sprague-Dawlay rats were mated with their female counterparts in pairs, the latent period of chasing, the frequencies of chasing in 60 minutes, the latent period of intercourse and the frequencies of intercourse in 60 minutes were recorded. RESULTS: Compared with the control, the frequencies of chasing were significantly increased and the latent periods of chasing were significantly shortened in both high dosage and medium dosage groups after using sildenafil (P < 0.01); The frequencies of intercourse in 60 minutes were significantly increased and the latent periods of intercourse were significantly shortened in all the groups after the use of sildenafil. CONCLUSIONS: The sexual activities of male rats treated with sildenafil were significantly activated.