ABSTRACT
Since ferroptosis is considered to be a notable cause of cardiomyocyte death, inhibiting ferroptosis has become a novel strategy in reducing cardiac cell death and improving cardiopathic conditions. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to search for ferroptosis-related hub genes and determine their diagnostic value in myocardial infarction (MI) to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. A total of 10,286 DEGs were identified, including 6,822 upregulated and 3.464 downregulated genes in patients with MI compared with healthy controls. After overlapping with ferroptosis-related genes, 128 ferroptosis-related DEGs were obtained. WGCNA successfully identified a further eight functional modules, from which the blue module had the strongest correlation with MI. Blue module genes and ferroptosis-related differentially expressed genes were overlapped to obtain 20 ferroptosis-related genes associated with MI. Go and KEGG analysis showed that these genes were mainly enriched in cellular response to chemical stress, trans complex, transferring, phosphorus-containing groups, protein serine/threonine kinase activity, FoxO signaling pathway. Hub genes were obtained from 20 ferroptosis-related genes through the PPI network. The expression of hub genes was found to be down-regulated in the MI group. Finally, the miRNAs-hub genes and TFs-hub genes networks were constructed. The GSE141512 dataset and the use of RT-qPCR assays on patient blood samples were used to confirm these results. The results showed that ATM, PIK3CA, MAPK8, KRAS and SIRT1 may play key roles in the development of MI, and could therefore be novel markers or targets for the diagnosis or treatment of MI.
ABSTRACT
In theory, quantum key distribution (QKD) can offer information-theoretic secure communication based on the laws of quantum mechanics. However, the vast majority of practical QKD implementations assume the perfect state preparation to ensure security, which is a demanding requirement with current technology. Here, by incorporating the mismatched-basis data, we report an experimental decoy-state QKD demonstration with uncharacterized encoding sources, which only requires that the encoding states are two-dimensional. Furthermore, the measurement operation of the receiver is loosened to be projective measurements. With a rigorous statistical fluctuation analysis, we can distribute secret keys when the transmission distances of the standard fiber link are 101 and 202 km. Our experimental demonstration represents a significant step toward realizing long-distance quantum communication, even with uncharacterized sources and projective measurements.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of functional expression of TRPM7 with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) growth. We examined the correlation of TRPM7 expression with cell growth and proliferation, cell cycle, and apoptosis in vitro in NPC cell lines and NPC tumorigenesis in mice by conducting experiments in mice and by further analyzing the tumor volume and growth. We further explored to see whether there is any positive correlation with the TRPM7 knockdown in NPC cells with their sensitivity to radiation. We found that the functional expression of TRPM7 in nasopharyngeal carcinoma is a critical requirement for physiological processes such as cell cycle, resistance to apoptosis, and cell proliferation. TRPM7 knockdown also enhanced sensitivity to radiotherapy of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Moreover, we identified TRPM7 as a novel potential regulator of cell proliferation in NPC, through signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3)-mediated signaling pathway and other anti-apoptotic factors. TRPM7 and STAT3 activation might be critical for the growth of NPC cells and could be an effective target for treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
