A global bibliometric and visualized analysis in the status and trends of corneal tissue engineering research from 1991 to 2021.

Corneal tissue engineering has developed rapidly in recent years, with a large number of publications emerging worldwide. This study focused on exploring the global status and research trends in this field. Publications related to corneal tissue engineering from 1991 to 2021 were acquired from the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-Expanded) of Web of Science (WoS). Firstly, the VOS viewer software was chosen for visualizing bibliometric networks, including bibliographic coupling analysis, co-citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, and co-occurrence analysis, and the CiteSpace software was used to detect burst keywords. Subsequently, the publication trends in corneal tissue engineering research were also predicted. In present study, 953 publications were selected and analyzed. The number of annual publications was increasing globally and was predicted to continue the current trend. While Japan ranked top 1 in terms of average citation, the USA contributed the most to the corneal tissue engineering research with highest number of citations and highest H-index. The journal of Biomaterials contributed the largest publication number. The top-ranked institutions were National University of Singapore and Singapore National Eye Center. Additionally, researches could be manually divided into four clusters: "biomaterial related research," "cell related research," "transplantation therapy," and "mechanism research on biomaterials." Specifically, the research topic "hydrogel" was predicted to be hotspots which may help researchers to explore new directions for future research.

Comparison of Sb2O3 and Sb2O3/SiO2 Double Stacked pH Sensing Membrane Applied in Electrolyte-Insulator-Semiconductor Structure.

In this study, electrolyte-insulator-semiconductor (EIS) capacitors with Sb2O3/SiO2 double stacked sensing membranes were fabricated with pH sensing capability. The results indicate that Sb2O3/SiO2 double stacked membranes with appropriate annealing had better material quality and sensing performance than Sb2O3 membranes did. To investigate the influence of double stack and annealing, multiple material characterizations and sensing measurements on membranes including of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were conducted. These analyses indicate that double stack could enhance crystallization and grainization, which reinforced the surface sites on the membrane. Therefore, the sensing capability could be enhanced, Sb2O3/SiO2-based with appropriate annealing show promises for future industrial ion sensing devices.

Syringic acid demonstrates promising protective effect against tau fibrillization and cytotoxicity through regulation of endoplasmic reticulum stress-mediated pathway as a prelude to Alzheimer's disease.

There are several studies reporting that different plant-based metabolites are potential inhibitors of protein amyloid fibrillation. As chemical features of metabolites can regulate protein aggregation process, in the present in vitro investigation, tau protein was selected as a model of Alzheimer's disease to elaborate the inhibitory effect of syringic acid (SA) on its assembly and associated neurotoxicity in aggregation conditions. Extrinsic fluorescence, Congo red adsorption, and CD spectroscopic studies, TEM, size-exclusion chromatography, and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry analysis along with MTT and qRT-PCR assays were performed to assess the inhibitory effects of SA against tau aggregation and neurotoxicity. It was shown that SA has the tendency to control the aggregation of the tau proteins through modulating the amyloid kinetic parameters, exposure of hydrophobic residues, and structural changes. Moreover, the structures formed in the presence of SA recovered the viability of neuron-like cells (SH-SY5Y) through regulation of endoplasmic reticulum stress signaling pathway by downregulation of ATF-6, caspase-8 and caspase-3 mRNA. In conclusion, it can be suggested that SA may be used as a potential small molecule in the development of therapeutic platforms against Alzheimer's disease.

Effect of LPS on Cytokine Secretion from Peripheral Blood Monocytes in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis-Associated Uveitis Patients with Positive Antinuclear Antibody.

OBJECTIVES: Antinuclear antibody (ANA) positivity is a key finding in JIA-associated uveitis (JIAU), but there are quite a few patients with negative ANA. There is no relevant report on the difference of their clinical manifestations. Previous animal model studies have found that the occurrence of uveitis is related to macrophage activation. In this article, our goal is to investigate changes in the morphology and cytokines of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in uveitis patients testing positive or negative for ANAs after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulation. METHODS: A total of 30 patients were included in this study (10 in each group). They were divided into three groups (the ANA-positive [ANA+] group, ANA-negative [ANA-] group, and control group). There were ten patients (6 females and 4 males) in each group. Peripheral venous blood was collected into a heparinized tube, and PBMCs were isolated as soon as possible by the Ficoll-Hypaque density gradient separation method. Isolated cells were mixed with RPMI-1640 medium, and the cell concentration was adjusted to ensure that each patient had the same number of cells entering the study. After putting the extracted PBMC into the culture plate, LPS was added carefully to the plate. The cell culture supernatants were collected at 0 h, 3 h, 6 h, 12 h, and 24 h after LPS stimulation to detect the concentrations of IL-6, IL-1, TNF-α, and IL-10. Immunofluorescence was used to discover the deformation of macrophages after LPS stimulation. RESULTS: The newly isolated cells were approximately round. 6 h after LPS stimulation, the ratio of noncircular cells/circular cells was the highest in the ANA+ group. Unlike IL-10 that has been rising during the observation period, IL-6, IL-1, and TNF-α peaked at 6 h after LPS stimulation. CONCLUSION: With LPS motivation, cytokines in the ANA+ group increased the most violently.

Characterization of the testicular regeneration potential in premature cockerels.

Previous studies have shown that grafted neonatal chicken testicular tissue can develop and produce functional sperm; however, it was unclear whether regenerative processes or proportional growth caused the re-appearance of spermatogenic tissue. We dissociated testicular tissues, performed subcutaneous auto-transplantation of the re-aggregated cells to castrated cockerels, and monitored the post-surgery development of these transplanted aggregates. We found that these transplanted cell aggregates experienced compensatory growth in the form of a 300-fold increase in size, rather than the 30-fold increase observed in normal testis development. Further, these dissociated testicular cell aggregates restored seminiferous tubule structure and were able to produce testosterone and motile sperm. Therefore, we concluded that the dissociated testicular cells from 11-week-old cockerels retained a strong regenerative potential, as they exhibited compensatory growth, restored destroyed structure, and sustained spermatogenesis.

Expression of germline markers in three species of amphioxus supports a preformation mechanism of germ cell development in cephalochordates.

BACKGROUND: In a previous study, we showed that the cephalochordate amphioxus Branchiostoma floridae has localized maternal transcripts of conserved germ cell markers Vasa and Nanos in its early embryos. These results provided strong evidence to support a preformation mechanism for primordial germ cell (PGC) development in B. floridae. RESULTS: In this study, we further characterize the expression of B. floridae homologs of Piwi and Tudor, which play important roles in germline development in diverse metazoan animals. We show that maternal mRNA of one of the identified Piwi-like homologs, Bf-Piwil1, also colocalizes with Vasa in the vegetal germ plasm and has zygotic expression in both the putative PGCs and the tail bud, suggesting it may function in both germline and somatic stem cells. More interestingly, one Tudor family gene, Bf-Tdrd7, is only expressed maternally and colocalizes with Vasa in germ plasm, suggesting that it may function exclusively in germ cell specification. To evaluate the conservation of the preformation mechanism among amphioxus species, we further analyze Vasa, Nanos, Piwil1, and Tdrd7 expression in two Asian amphioxus species, B. belcheri and B. japonicum. Their maternal transcripts all localize in similar patterns to those seen in B. floridae. In addition, we labeled putative PGCs with Vasa antibody to trace their dynamic distribution in developing larvae. CONCLUSIONS: We identify additional germ plasm components in amphioxus and demonstrate the molecular distinction between the putative germline stem cells and somatic stem cells. Moreover, our results suggest that preformation may be a conserved mechanism for PGC specification among Branchiostoma species. Our Vasa antibody staining results suggest that after the late neurula stage, amphioxus PGCs probably proliferate with the tail bud cells during posterior elongation and are deposited near the forming myomere boundaries. Subsequently, these PGCs would concentrate at the ventral tip of the myoseptal walls to form the gonad anlagen.

Asymmetric localization of germline markers Vasa and Nanos during early development in the amphioxus Branchiostoma floridae.

The origin of germline cells was a crucial step in animal evolution. Therefore, in both developmental biology and evolutionary biology, the mechanisms of germline specification have been extensively studied over the past two centuries. However, in many animals, the process of germline specification remains unclear. Here, we show that in the cephalochordate amphioxus Branchiostoma floridae, the germ cell-specific molecular markers Vasa and Nanos become localized to the vegetal pole cytoplasm during oogenesis and are inherited asymmetrically by a single blastomere during cleavage. After gastrulation, this founder cell gives rise to a cluster of progeny that display typical characters of primordial germ cells (PGCs). Blastomeres separated at the two-cell stage grow into twin embryos, but one of the twins fails to develop this Vasa-positive cell population, suggesting that the vegetal pole cytoplasm is required for the formation of putative PGCs in amphioxus embryos. Contrary to the hypothesis that cephalochordates may form their PGCs by epigenesis, our data strongly support a preformation mode of germ cell specification in amphioxus. In addition to the early localization of their maternal transcripts in the putative PGCs, amphioxus Vasa and Nanos are also expressed zygotically in the tail bud, which is the posterior growth zone of amphioxus. Thus, in addition to PGC specification, amphioxus Vasa and Nanos may also function in highly proliferating somatic stem cells.