High-density, highly sensitive sensor array of spiky carbon nanospheres for strain field mapping.

While accurate mapping of strain distribution is crucial for assessing stress concentration and estimating fatigue life in engineering applications, conventional strain sensor arrays face a great challenge in balancing sensitivity and sensing density for effective strain mapping. In this study, we present a Fowler-Nordheim tunneling effect of monodispersed spiky carbon nanosphere array on polydimethylsiloxane as strain sensor arrays to achieve a sensitivity up to 70,000, a sensing density of 100 pixel cm-2, and logarithmic linearity over 99% within a wide strain range of 0% to 60%. The highly ordered assembly of spiky carbon nanospheres in each unit also ensures high inter-unit consistency (standard deviation ≤3.82%). Furthermore, this sensor array can conformally cover diverse surfaces, enabling accurate acquisition of strain distributions. The sensing array offers a convenient approach for mapping strain fields in various applications such as flexible electronics, soft robotics, biomechanics, and structure health monitoring.

Prospective Investigation of Optical Genome Mapping for Prenatal Genetic Diagnosis.

BACKGROUND: Optical genome mapping (OGM) is a novel assay for detecting structural variants (SVs) and has been retrospectively evaluated for its performance. However, its prospective evaluation in prenatal diagnosis remains unreported. This study aimed to prospectively assess the technical concordance of OGM with standard of care (SOC) testing in prenatal diagnosis. METHODS: A prospective cohort of 204 pregnant women was enrolled in this study. Amniotic fluid samples from these women were subjected to OGM and SOC testing, which included chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA) and karyotyping (KT) in parallel. The diagnostic yield of OGM was evaluated, and the technical concordance between OGM and SOC testing was assessed. RESULTS: OGM successfully analyzed 204 cultured amniocyte samples, even with a cell count as low as 0.24 million. In total, 60 reportable SVs were identified through combined OGM and SOC testing, with 22 SVs detected by all 3 techniques. The diagnostic yield for OGM, CMA, and KT was 25% (51/204), 22.06% (45/204), and 18.14% (37/204), respectively. The highest diagnostic yield (29.41%, 60/204) was achieved when OGM and KT were used together. OGM demonstrated a concordance of 95.56% with CMA and 75.68% with KT in this cohort study. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that OGM can be effectively applied in prenatal diagnosis using cultured amniocytes and exhibits high concordance with SOC testing. The combined use of OGM and KT appears to yield the most promising diagnostic outcomes.

Nanocellulose Composite Films in Food Packaging Materials: A Review.

Owing to the environmental pollution caused by petroleum-based packaging materials, there is an imminent need to develop novel food packaging materials. Nanocellulose, which is a one-dimensional structure, has excellent physical and chemical properties, such as renewability, degradability, sound mechanical properties, and good biocompatibility, indicating promising applications in modern industry, particularly in food packaging. This article introduces nanocellulose, followed by its extraction methods and the preparation of relevant composite films. Meanwhile, the performances of nanocellulose composite films in improving the mechanical, barrier (oxygen, water vapor, ultraviolet) and thermal properties of food packaging materials and the development of biodegradable or edible packaging materials in the food industry are elaborated. In addition, the excellent performances of nanocellulose composites for the packaging and preservation of various food categories are outlined. This study provides a theoretical framework for the development and utilization of nanocellulose composite films in the food packaging industry.

Depressive Disorder Recognition Based on Frontal EEG Signals and Deep Learning.

Depressive disorder (DD) has become one of the most common mental diseases, seriously endangering both the affected person's psychological and physical health. Nowadays, a DD diagnosis mainly relies on the experience of clinical psychiatrists and subjective scales, lacking objective, accurate, practical, and automatic diagnosis technologies. Recently, electroencephalogram (EEG) signals have been widely applied for DD diagnosis, but mainly with high-density EEG, which can severely limit the efficiency of the EEG data acquisition and reduce the practicability of diagnostic techniques. The current study attempts to achieve accurate and practical DD diagnoses based on combining frontal six-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and deep learning models. To this end, 10 min clinical resting-state EEG signals were collected from 41 DD patients and 34 healthy controls (HCs). Two deep learning models, multi-resolution convolutional neural network (MRCNN) combined with long short-term memory (LSTM) (named MRCNN-LSTM) and MRCNN combined with residual squeeze and excitation (RSE) (named MRCNN-RSE), were proposed for DD recognition. The results of this study showed that the higher EEG frequency band obtained the better classification performance for DD diagnosis. The MRCNN-RSE model achieved the highest classification accuracy of 98.48 ± 0.22% with 8-30 Hz EEG signals. These findings indicated that the proposed analytical framework can provide an accurate and practical strategy for DD diagnosis, as well as essential theoretical and technical support for the treatment and efficacy evaluation of DD.

[Characterization of genetic variants in children with refractory epilepsy].

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the characteristics of genetic variants among children with refractory epilepsy (RE). METHODS: One hundred and seventeen children with RE who had presented at the Affiliated Jinhua Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine from January 1, 2018 to November 21, 2019 were selected as the study subjects. The children were divided into four groups according to their ages of onset: < 1 year old, 1 ~ 3 years old, 3 ~ 12 years old, and >= 12 years old. Clinical data and results of trio-whole exome sequencing were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: In total 67 males and 50 females were included. The age of onset had ranged from 4 days to 14 years old. Among the 117 patients, 33 (28.21%) had carried pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants. The detection rates for the < 1 year old, 1 ~ 3 years old and >= 3 years old groups were 53.85% (21/39), 12.00% (3/25) and 16.98% (9/53), respectively, with a significant difference among the groups (χ2 = 19.202, P < 0.001). The detection rates for patients with and without comorbidities were 33.33% (12/36) and 25.93% (21/81), respectively (χ2 = 0.359, P = 0.549). Among the 33 patients carrying genetic variants, 27 were single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or insertion/deletions (InDels), and 6 were copy number variations (CNVs). The most common mutant genes were PRRT2 (15.15%, 5/33) and SCN1A (12.12%, 4/33). Among children carrying genetic variants, 72.73% (8/11) had attained clinical remission after adjusting the medication according to the references. CONCLUSION: 28.21% of RE patients have harbored pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants or CNVs. The detection rate is higher in those with younger age of onset. PRRT2 and SCN1A genes are more commonly involved. Adjusting medication based on the types of affected genes may facilitate improvement of the remission rate.

Immunomodulatory effects of two recombinant arginine kinases in Sarcoptes Scabiei on host peripheral blood mononuclear cells.

Background: As an important zoonotic parasitic disease with global distribution, scabies causes serious public health and economic problems. Arginine kinase (AK) is involved in cell signal transduction, inflammation, and apoptosis. Two AKs were identified in Sarcoptes scabiei, but their functions in the host immune response remain unclear. Methods: rSsAK-1 and rSsAK-2 were expressed, purified, and immunolocalized. The effects of rSsAK-1 and rSsAK-2 on rabbit PBMC proliferation, apoptosis, and migration; Bcl-2, Bcl-xl, Fas, Bax, and NF-κB transcription levels; and IL-2, IFN-γ, IL-4, IL-10, TGF-ß1, and IL-17 secretion were detected. Results: rSsAK-1 and rSsAK-2 were cloned and expressed successfully. Both enzymes were ~57 kDa and contained 17-kDa tagged proteins, and had good catalytic activity and immunoreactivity. The proteins were located in the S. scabiei exoskeleton, chewing mouthparts, legs, stomach, and intestine. SsAK-1 and SsAK-2 were secreted in the pool and epidermis of the skin lesions, which may be involved in S. scabiei-host interaction. rSsAK-1 and rSsAK-2 significantly promoted cell proliferation, induced cell migration, inhibited apoptosis, and increased Bcl-2, Bcl-xl and NF-κB (p65) transcription levels concentration-dependently, and inhibited IL-2, IFN-γ, and IL-10 secretion and promoted IL-4 and IL-17 secretion. Conclusion: rSsAK-1 and rSsAK-2 might increase Bcl-2 and Bcl-xl expression by activating the NF-κB signaling pathway to promote cell proliferation and inhibit apoptosis, which induced PBMC survival. By inducing PBMC migration to the infection site, rSsAK-1 and rSsAK-2 shifted the Th1/Th2 balance toward Th2 and changed the Th17/Treg balance, which indicated their immune role in S. scabiei allergic inflammation.

Difference analysis of multidimensional electroencephalogram characteristics between young and old patients with generalized anxiety disorder.

Growing evidences indicate that age plays an important role in the development of mental disorders, but few studies focus on the neuro mechanisms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in different age groups. Therefore, this study attempts to reveal the neurodynamics of Young_GAD (patients with GAD under the age of 50) and Old_GAD (patients with GAD over 50 years old) through statistical analysis of multidimensional electroencephalogram (EEG) features and machine learning models. In this study, 10-min resting-state EEG data were collected from 45 Old_GAD and 33 Young_GAD. And multidimensional EEG features were extracted, including absolute power (AP), fuzzy entropy (FE), and phase-lag-index (PLI), on which comparison and analyses were performed later. The results showed that Old_GAD exhibited higher power spectral density (PSD) value and FE value in beta rhythm compared to theta, alpha1, and alpha2 rhythms, and functional connectivity (FC) also demonstrated significant reorganization of brain function in beta rhythm. In addition, the accuracy of machine learning classification between Old_GAD and Young_GAD was 99.67%, further proving the feasibility of classifying GAD patients by age. The above findings provide an objective basis in the field of EEG for the age-specific diagnosis and treatment of GAD.

Driving Fatigue Detection with Three Non-Hair-Bearing EEG Channels and Modified Transformer Model.

Driving fatigue is the main cause of traffic accidents, which seriously affects people's life and property safety. Many researchers have applied electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for driving fatigue detection to reduce negative effects. The main challenges are the practicality and accuracy of the EEG-based driving fatigue detection method when it is applied on the real road. In our previous study, we attempted to improve the practicality of fatigue detection based on the proposed non-hair-bearing (NHB) montage with fewer EEG channels, but the recognition accuracy was only 76.47% with the random forest (RF) model. In order to improve the accuracy with NHB montage, this study proposed an improved transformer architecture for one-dimensional feature vector classification based on introducing the Gated Linear Unit (GLU) in the Attention sub-block and Feed-Forward Networks (FFN) sub-block of a transformer, called GLU-Oneformer. Moreover, we constructed an NHB-EEG-based feature set, including the same EEG features (power ratio, approximate entropy, and mutual information (MI)) in our previous study, and the lateralization features of the power ratio and approximate entropy based on the strategy of brain lateralization. The results indicated that our GLU-Oneformer method significantly improved the recognition performance and achieved an accuracy of 86.97%. Our framework demonstrated that the combination of the NHB montage and the proposed GLU-Oneformer model could well support driving fatigue detection.

Effects of Sarcoptes scabiei Translationally Controlled Tumor Protein (TCTP) on Histamine Release and Degranulation of KU812 Cells.

Scabies is a common parasitic dermatological infection worldwide that is often neglected. Scabies mites stimulate host inflammatory symptoms via secreted and excreted proteins, which induce basophil and mast cell degranulation and host histamine release. However, the mechanism of degranulation and histamine release is unclear. Moreover, the Sarcoptes scabiei translationally controlled tumor protein (TCTP) is predicted as an excreted protein, which may be involved in host inflammatory response regulation. First, we evaluated S. scabiei TCTP gene (SsTCTP) transcription in larvae, nymphs, and adults by qRT-PCR, and SsTCTP transcription was highest in larvae, followed by nymphs. Second, we found that the S. scabiei TCTP recombinant protein (rSsTCTP) promoted mice histamine release in vivo by Evans blue Miles assay. Therefore, to further explore the possible role of S. scabiei TCTP in host inflammatory response regulation, we established a degranulation model of KU812 cells. The results of the degranulation model suggested that rSsTCTP could induce enhanced degranulation of KU812 cells and increase the secretion of histamine and the expression of IL-4, IL-6, and IL-13 in vitro. In conclusion, we speculate that scabies mites could stimulate host histamine release and Th2 response by excreting S. scabiei TCTP.

Reorganization of Brain Functional Network during Task Switching before and after Mental Fatigue.

Mental fatigue is a widely studied topic on account of its serious negative effects. But how the neural mechanism of task switching before and after mental fatigue remains a question. To this end, this study aims to use brain functional network features to explore the answer to this question. Specifically, task-state EEG signals were recorded from 20 participants. The tasks include a 400-s 2-back-task (2-BT), followed by a 6480-s of mental arithmetic task (MAT), and then a 400-s 2-BT. Network features and functional connections were extracted and analyzed based on the selected task switching states, referred to from Pre_2-BT to Pre_MAT before mental fatigue and from Post_MAT to Post_2-BT after mental fatigue. The results showed that mental fatigue has been successfully induced by long-term MAT based on the significant changes in network characteristics and the high classification accuracy of 98% obtained with Support Vector Machines (SVM) between Pre_2-BT and Post_2-BT. when the task switched from Pre_2-BT to Pre_MAT, delta and beta rhythms exhibited significant changes among all network features and the selected functional connections showed an enhanced trend. As for the task switched from Post_MAT to Post_2-BT, the network features and selected functional connectivity of beta rhythm were opposite to the trend of task switching before mental fatigue. Our findings provide new insights to understand the neural mechanism of the brain in the process of task switching and indicate that the network features and functional connections of beta rhythm can be used as neural markers for task switching before and after mental fatigue.

Common carotid artery thrombosis and malignant middle cerebral artery infarction following ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome: A case report.

BACKGROUND: Arterial thrombosis is a serious and rare complication of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS). Herein, we describe a case of OHSS complicated by common carotid artery thrombosis and malignant middle cerebral artery infarction after egg retrieval and before embryo transfer. CASE SUMMARY: A 32-year-old female with a family history of thrombosis who was undergoing in vitro fertilization due to unexplained infertility, was admitted due to abdominal distension for 3 d and coma for 2 h. She received egg retrieval 7 d ago and embryo transfer had not yet been performed. Blood biochemical analysis showed estrogen of 15781 pmol/L. Gynecological examination showed palpable masses on both sides of the adnexal areas. Ultrasound observed enlarged ovaries and abdominal ascites. Imaging examination of the head and neck revealed fresh malignant middle cerebral artery infarction in the left side of brain and internal carotid artery as well as occlusion in the left carotid artery, internal carotid artery, and middle cerebral artery. The patient was finally diagnosed with severe OHSS, complicated by common carotid artery thrombosis and malignant middle cerebral artery infarction. Liquid replacement, anticoagulation, vascular endothelium protection, brain protection and decompressive craniectomy were carried out. Rehabilitation training was then performed for 6 mo. At present, she has poor speaking ability and decreased muscle strength on the right side. CONCLUSION: There is a risk of thrombosis during any period of OHSS. During in vitro assisted reproduction, for cases with a family history of thrombosis, hyperlipidemia and other high-risk factors, serum lipid levels should be controlled as soon as possible to improve metabolic dysfunction. When thrombosis occurs, timely and effective treatment should be performed to improve the prognosis.

The role of caregiver gestures and gesture-related responses of toddlers with autism spectrum disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social communicative abnormalities. Deficits and delays in gestural communication are among the early deficits of ASD and also a major social modality in early caregiver-toddler interaction. Caregiver gestures have an important role in the cognitive and social development of children with ASD. Thus, it is urgent to further explore the role of caregiver gestures in early caregiver-toddler interaction. In this cross-sectional study, we observed the caregivers' gestures and responses of toddlers aged between 18 and 24 months during play (ASD = 44, TD = 29) and dining activities (ASD = 34, TD = 27). By observing the different frequencies and patterns of gestures by the caregiver-child interaction and the different proportions of children's responses to the caregiver's gestures, we found that, compared to caregivers of typically developing toddlers, caregivers of toddlers with ASD had fewer synchronized gestures and more unsynchronized gestures in the play activity and more supplementary gestures in dining activity. Toddlers with ASD produced more social responses to caregivers' synchronized gestures, whereas the use of synchronized gestures by the caregivers in caregiver-toddler interaction had a positive influence on social responses to toddlers with ASD. The findings suggest that effective use of gestures by caregivers during caregiver-toddler activities can improve children's social responses.

Effects of Family Participatory Nursing on Clinical Outcomes of Premature Infants in NICU and Families' Psychological Status.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of family participatory nursing on the clinical outcomes of premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and their families' psychological status. Total of 150 premature infants were admitted to the NICU of our hospital from December 2019 to December 2021, and their families were selected by convenience sampling method and divided into control group (n = 78, from December 2019 to December 2020) and observation group (n = 72, from January 2020 to December 2021) according to the admission time. The infants in the control group were given routine nursing, while those in the observation group received family participatory nursing. In the observation group, the length of stay and duration of oxygen therapy were shorter, the weight gain speed was higher, and the incidence rate of nosocomial infection was lower than those in control groups (P < 0.05). The time of reaching full gastrointestinal feeding was earlier, the daily milk intake and exclusive breastfeeding rate were higher, and the feeding intolerance rate was lower in observation group than those in control group (P < 0.05). Observation group exhibited significantly higher body weight, Z-value of body weight, NBNA score at 7 d after hospitalization, 15-month mental development index (MDI), and psychomotor development index (PDI) scores than control group (P < 0.05). In addition, the families' somatization, depression and anxiety factor scores, and total score of SCL-90 in the observation group were lower than those in the control group, while each dimension score and total score of MPOC-20 were higher than those in control groups (P < 0.05). Family participatory nursing is of great significance in ameliorating the clinical outcomes of premature infants in the NICU, which can shorten the length of stay, improve feeding conditions, facilitate infant growth and development, and enhance their families' psychological status and nursing satisfaction.

Vacuum-Assisted Thermal Annealing of CsPbI3 for Highly Stable and Efficient Inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells.

Inorganic cesium lead iodide perovskite CsPbI3 is attracting great attention as a light absorber for single or multi-junction photovoltaics due to its outstanding thermal stability and proper band gap. However, the device performance of CsPbI3 -based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is limited by the unsatisfactory crystal quality and thus severe non-radiative recombination. Here, vacuum-assisted thermal annealing (VATA) is demonstrated as an effective approach for controlling the morphology and crystallinity of the CsPbI3 perovskite films formed from the precursors of PbI2 , CsI, and dimethylammonium iodide (DMAI). By this method, a large-area and high-quality CsPbI3 film is obtained, exhibiting a much reduced trap-state density with prolonged charge lifetime. Consequently, the solar cell efficiency is raised from 17.26 to 20.06 %, along with enhanced stability. The VATA would be an effective approach for fabricating high-performance thin-film CsPbI3 perovskite optoelectronics.

Effect of Swell1 on regulating chondrocyte hypertrophy during the condylar osteochondral development process in mice.

Chondrocyte hypertrophy is a significant factor in cartilage development, yet the molecular mechanism for cell volume expand during the process is remains unclear. In the present study, the relationship between Swell1, a cell volume regulated anion channel, and chondrocyte hypertrophy was explored. The results reveal that the spatiotemporal expression of Swell1 was similar with the development process of hypertrophic chondrocytes in condyles. Through Col10a1 mediated knock out of Swell1 in hypertrophy chondrocytes, we found that there are less obvious boundary between different condylar cartilage layers in which increased hypertrophic chondrocytes were scattered in all three cartilage layers. The cortical bone mass and bone mineral density in the subchondral bone significantly increased. Additionally, knock out of Swell1 could increase the expression of OCN in the femur condyle. Based on the aforementioned findings, a conclusion could be drawn that Swell1 is a significant factor in chondrocyte hypertrophy during the condylar osteochondral development process, and there was some difference between the mandibular and femur condyles, which will provide some new clues for understanding the development of cartilage and related diseases.

A Practical Application for Quantitative Brain Fatigue Evaluation Based on Machine Learning and Ballistocardiogram.

Brain fatigue is often associated with inattention, mental retardation, prolonged reaction time, decreased work efficiency, increased error rate, and other problems. In addition to the accumulation of fatigue, brain fatigue has become one of the important factors that harm our mental health. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the practical and accurate brain fatigue detection method, especially for quantitative brain fatigue evaluation. In this study, a biomedical signal of ballistocardiogram (BCG), which does not require direct contact with human body, was collected by optical fiber sensor cushion during the whole process of cognitive tasks for 20 subjects. The heart rate variability (HRV) was calculated based on BCG signal. Machine learning classification model was built based on random forest to quantify and recognize brain fatigue. The results showed that: Firstly, the heart rate obtained from BCG signal was consistent with the result displayed by the medical equipment, and the absolute difference was less than 3 beats/min, and the mean error is 1.30 ± 0.81 beats/min; secondly, the random forest classifier for brain fatigue evaluation based on HRV can effectively identify the state of brain fatigue, with an accuracy rate of 96.54%; finally, the correlation between HRV and the accuracy was analyzed, and the correlation coefficient was as high as 0.98, which indicates that the accuracy can be used as an indicator for quantitative brain fatigue evaluation during the whole task. The results suggested that the brain fatigue quantification evaluation method based on the optical fiber sensor cushion and machine learning can carry out real-time brain fatigue detection on the human brain without disturbance, reduce the risk of human accidents in human-machine interaction systems, and improve mental health among the office and driving personnel.

The Regulatory Role of GBF1 on Osteoclast Activation Through EIF2a Mediated ER Stress and Novel Marker FAM129A Induction.

Bone-resorbing activities of osteoclasts (OCs) are highly dependent on actin cytoskeleton remodeling, plasma membrane reorganization, and vesicle trafficking pathways, which are partially regulated by ARF-GTPases. In the present study, the functional roles of Golgi brefeldin A resistance factor 1 (GBF1) are proposed. GBF1 is responsible for the activation of the ARFs family and vesicular transport at the endoplasmic reticulum-Golgi interface in different stages of OCs differentiation. In the early stage, GBF1 deficiency impaired OCs differentiation and was accompanied with OCs swelling and reduced formation of mature OCs, indicating that GBF1 participates in osteoclastogenesis. Using siRNA and the specific inhibitor GCA for GBF1 knockdown upregulated endoplasmic reticulum stress-associated signaling molecules, including BiP, p-PERK, p-EIF2α, and FAM129A, and promoted autophagic Beclin1, Atg7, p62, and LC3 axis, leading to apoptosis of OCs. The present data suggest that, by blocking COPI-mediated vesicular trafficking, GBF1 inhibition caused intense stress to the endoplasmic reticulum and excessive autophagy, eventually resulting in the apoptosis of mature OCs and impaired bone resorption function.

The Gestures in 2-4-Year-Old Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Deficits in gestures act as early signs of impairment in social interaction (SI) and communication in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the pieces of literature on atypical gesture patterns in ASD children are contradictory. This investigation aimed to explore the atypical gesture pattern of ASD children from the dimensions of quantity, communicative function, and integration ability; and its relationship with social ability and adaptive behavior. We used a semi-structured interactive play to evaluate gestures of 33 ASD children (24-48 months old) and 24 typically developing (TD) children (12-36 months old). And we evaluated the social ability, adaptive behavior, and productive language of ASD and TD children by using the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System version II (ABAS-II) and Chinese Communication Development Inventory (CCDI). No matter the total score of CCDI was corrected or not, the relative frequency of total gestures, behavior regulation (BR) gestures, SI gestures, and joint attention (JA) gestures of ASD children were lower than that of TD children, as well as the proportion of JA gestures. However, there was no significant group difference in the proportion of BR and SI gestures. Before adjusting for the total score of CCDI, the relative frequency of gestures without vocalization/verbalization integration and vocalization/verbalization-integrated gestures in ASD children was lower than that in TD children. However, after matching the total score of CCDI, only the relative frequency of gestures without vocalization/verbalization integration was lower. Regardless of the fact that the total score of CCDI was corrected or not, the relative frequency and the proportion of eye-gaze-integrated gestures in ASD children were lower than that in TD children. And the proportion of gestures without eye-gaze integration in ASD children was higher than that in TD children. For ASD children, the social skills score in ABAS-II was positively correlated with the relative frequency of SI gesture and eye-gaze-integrated gestures; the total score of ABAS-II was positively correlated with the relative frequency of total gestures and eye-gaze-integrated gestures. In conclusion, ASD children produce fewer gestures and have deficits in JA gestures. The deficiency of integrating eye gaze and gesture is the core deficit of ASD children's gesture communication. Relatively, ASD children might be capable of integrating vocalization/verbalization into gestures. SI gestures and the ability to integrate gesture and eye gaze are related to social ability. The quantity of gestures and the ability to integrate gesture with eye gaze are related to adaptive behavior. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier ChiCTR1800019679.

MiR-99b-5p Attenuates Adipogenesis by Targeting SCD1 and Lpin1 in 3T3-L1 Cells.

The number and distribution of adipocytes directly affect the quality of livestock meat products. The analysis of the adipogenesis mechanism is the basis for improving meat quality. The formation of adipocytes is regulated by many factors, including a class of endogenous small RNAs, named microRNA (miRNA). Previous studies have shown that miRNAs could affect adipogenesis by post-transcriptional regulation of target genes. In our study, a decreased miR-99b-5p expression level was found in the adipose tissue of obese mice. Overexpression of miR-99b-5p could increase cell proliferation by promoting the cell cycle while inhibiting cell differentiation. In addition, interference with miR-99b-5p obtained the opposite result. Furthermore, the proteomics sequencing analysis screened 1154 differentially expressed proteins, which are closely related to adipocyte differentiation and fatty acid metabolism. In addition, the results of the dual-luciferase test showed that miR-99b-5p can directly target the proteins SCD1 and Lpin1 with significantly different expression levels in proteomic sequencing. Then, this result was verified at the level of mRNA and protein in a further study. Collectively, these results suggested that miR-99b-5p may be a target for improving meat quality.

Targeted inhibition of ATP5B gene prevents bone erosion in collagen-induced arthritis by inhibiting osteoclastogenesis.

Bone resorption by osteoclasts is an energy consuming activity, which depends on mitochondrial ATP. ATP5B, a mitochondrial ATP synthase beta subunit, is a catalytic core involved in producing ATP. Here, we investigated the contribution of ATP5B in osteoclast differentiation and joint destruction. ATP5B (LV-ATP5B) targeting or non-targeting (LV-NC) siRNA containing lentivirus particles were transduced into bone marrow macrophage derived osteoclasts or locally administered to arthritic mouse joints. Inhibition of ATP5B reduced the expression of osteoclast related genes and proteins, suppressed bone resorption by significantly impairing F-actin formation and decreased the levels of adhesion-associated proteins. In addition, ATP5B deficiency caused osteoclast mitochondrial dysfunction and, impaired the secretion of vacuole protons and MMP9. Importantly, inhibition of ATP5B expression, protected arthritis mice from joint destructions although serum levels of inflammatory mediators (TNF-α, IL-1ß) and IgG2α antibodies were unaffected. These results demonstrate an essential function of ATP5B in osteoclast differentiation and bone resorption, and suggest it as a potential therapeutic target for protecting bones in RA.