Patient with suspected co-infection of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome and malaria: a case report.

Background: Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) is a natural epidemic disease that can be caused by the Hantaan virus (HTNV). Malaria is caused by plasmodium and can be transmitted by a mosquito bite. The similar manifestations shared by these disorders pose a challenge for clinicians in differential diagnosis, in particular, coupled with a false-positive serological test. Case presentation: A 46-year-old man was admitted for fever and chills for over 10 days and was suspected of being co-infected with HFRS and malaria due to a history of travel to malaria-endemic areas and a positive HTNV-immunoglobulin M (IgM) test. Although leukocytosis, thrombocytopenia, renal injury, lymphocytosis, overexpression of interleukin-6, and procalcitonin were observed during the hospitalization, the hypotensive, oliguria, and polyuria phases of the HFRS course were not observed. Instead, typical symptoms of malaria were found, including a progressive decrease in erythrocytes and hemoglobin levels with signs of anemia. Furthermore, because the patient had no history of exposure to HFRS endemic areas, exposure to an HTNV-infected rodent, or a positive HTNV-IgG test, and false serological tests of IgM can be caused by various factors, the HFRS coinfection with malaria was ruled out. Conclusion: Misdiagnosis can be easily induced by a false serological test, in particular the IgM test which can be influenced by various factors. A combination of health history, epidemiology, physical examination, precise application of specific examinations involving tests of conventional laboratory parameters as well as well-accepted methods such as the immunochromatographic (ICG) test, real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and Western blot (WB), and acquaintance with disorders with similar manifestations will contribute to the precise diagnosis in clinical treatment.

Characteristics of the Hantaan virus complicated with SARS-CoV2 infection: A case series report.

Background: Coinfection poses a persistent threat to global public health due to its severe effect on individual-level infection risk and disease outcome. Coinfection of SARS-CoV2 with one or more pathogens has been documented. Nevertheless, this virus co-infected with the Hantaan virus (HTNV) is rarely reported. Case summary: Here, we presented three cases of HTNV complicated with SARS-CoV2 infection. Not only the conditions including general clinical manifestations, immune and inflammation parameters fluctuation presented in the single infection of HTNV or SARS-CoV2 can be found, but also the unexpected manifestations have attracted our attention that presented as more symptoms of HTNV infection including exudative changes in both lungs and an amount of bilateral pleural effusion as well as bilateral kidney enlargement rather than typical viral pneumonia in SARS-CoV2 infection. Fortunately, the conditions of patients gradually return to normal which is beneficial from the antiviral treatment, hemodialysis, and various supportive therapies including anti-inflammation, liver and gastric mucosa protection. Conclusion: Unexpected manifestations of coinfection patients present herein may be associated with multiple factors including virus load, competition or antagonism among antigens, and the susceptibility of target cells to the various pathogens, even though the pathogenesis of HTNV and SARS-CoV2 remains to be elucidated. Given that these two viruses have posed a profound influence on the socioeconomic, healthcare system worldwide, and the threat of coinfection to public health, it is warranted for clinicians, public health authorities, and infectious disease researchers to have a high index of consideration for patients co-infected with HTNV and SARS-CoV2.

Ultrasonic-Microwave extraction of glucoside alkaloids from potato peel residue and its antibacterial activity.

A new extraction and bacteriostatic ability of glucoside alkaloids in potato peel. To make better use of glucoside alkaloids, this experiment adopted ultrasonic microwave combined extraction of glucoside alkaloids from potato peel; then, the extracts of potato peel were subjected to bacteriostatic assays. The optimum experimental condition of response surface method was that the solid-liquid ratio was 1:18.00 g/mL, the ultrasonic power 505.00 W, the microwave time was 6.10 min and the ultrasonic time was 10.70 min. Under those conditions, the extraction amount of glucoside alkaloids was 292.91 mg/kg, which increased by about 28% compared with the QUEChERS method. The antibacterial activity of the obtained glucoside alkaloids was tested using five kinds of strains, and the results showed that Penicillium and Colletotrichum gloeosporioides were more sensitive. The results indicated that Ultrasonic-Microwave combined extraction was more efficient and convenient than that of QuEChERS method for glucoside alkaloids and related antibacterial compounds from potato peel.

Predictive value of CD4+CD8+ double positive T cells for the severity of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

PURPOSES: We aimed to investigate the levels of CD4+CD8+ double positive (DP) T cells in patients with various severities of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), and the predictive capacity of DP T cells for the severity of this disorder. METHODS: The levels of DP T cells in 213 patients and 48 healthy donors were measured by flow cytometry, as were the levels of CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, B lymphocytes, and natural killer (NK) cells. In each type of HFRS patient, we tested the basic clinical reference values for leukocytes, platelets, creatinine (Cr), uric acid (UA), and urea, and the values for activated partial thromboplastin time, prothrombin time, and fibrinogen, using conventional methods. The colloidal gold method was used to measure HFRS antibody levels in the patients. RESULTS: The frequency of DP T cells increased with disease severity and peaked in patients with critical disease. Furthermore, the level of DP T cells proportionally correlated with the levels of Cr, UA, and urea in the serum. In contrast, there was an inverse correlation between DP T cells and platelets. Interestingly, the pattern of change in DP T cell frequency was similar to those of CD8+ T cells, B cells, and NK cells, but an inverse tendency was observed for CD4+ T cells. DP T cells demonstrated significant predictive value for the severity of HFRS. CONCLUSIONS: The level of DP T cells is associated with HFRS severity, suggesting that it may be a potent indicator for the course of this disorder.

Potential clinical biomarkers in monitoring the severity of Hantaan virus infection.

Hantavirus, which causes hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) is almost prevalent worldwide. While Hantaan virus (HTNV) causes the most severe form of HFRS with typical clinical manifestations of thrombocytopenia, increased vascular permeability, and acute kidney injury. Although the knowledge of the pathogenesis of HFRS is still limited, immune dysfunction and pathological damage caused by disorders of immune regulation are proposed to play a vital role in the development of the disorder, and the endothelium is considered to be the primary target of hantaviruses. Here, we reviewed the production and function of multiple molecules, mainly focusing on their role in immune response, endothelium, vascular permeability regulation, and platelet and coagulation activation which are closely related to the pathogenesis of HTNV infection. meanwhile, the relationship between these molecules and characteristics of HTNV infection including the hospital duration, immune dysfunction, thrombocytopenia, leukocytosis, and acute kidney injury are also presented, to provide a novel insight into the potential role of these molecules as monitoring markers for HTNV infection.

Effects of Reactive Oxygen Levels on Chilling Injury and Storability in 21 Apricot Varieties from Different Production Areas in China.

The key factors for resistance to chilling injury in apricot fruits were obtained by analyzing the low-temperature storage characteristics of 21 varieties of apricot fruits in the main producing areas of China. Twenty-one varieties of apricots from different production areas in China were stored at 0 °C for 50 d and then shelved at 25 °C. The storage quality, chilling injury, reactive oxygen species (ROS), antioxidant ability, and contents of bioactive substances of the apricots were measured and analyzed. The results showed that the 21 varieties of apricot fruits could be divided into two categories according to tolerance during low-temperature storage, where there was chilling tolerance and lack of chilling tolerance. Eleven varieties of apricots, of which Xiangbai and Yunbai are representative, suffered from severe chilling injury after cold storage and shelf life. After 50 d of storage at 0 °C, the levels of superoxide anions and hydrogen peroxide accumulated in the 11 varieties of apricots with a lack of chilling tolerance during storage were significantly higher than those in the remaining 10 varieties of apricots with chilling tolerance. In addition, the activities of ROS scavenging enzymes, represented by superoxide dismutase, catalase and peroxidase, were significantly decreased in 11 varieties of apricots with a lack of chilling tolerance during storage. The contents of bioactive substances with ROS scavenging ability, represented by ascorbic acid, total phenols, carotenoids, and total flavonoids, also significantly decreased. The 10 varieties of apricots, of which Akeximixi and Suanmao are representative, were less affected by chilling injury because the production and removal of ROS were maintained at normal levels, avoiding the damaging effects of ROS accumulation in the fruit. In addition, the 10 apricot varieties with chilling tolerance during storage had higher sugar and acid contents after harvest. This could supply energy for physiological metabolism during cold storage and provide carbon skeletons for secondary metabolism, thus enhancing the chilling tolerance of the fruits. Based on the results of cluster analysis combined with the geographical distribution of the 21 fruit varieties, it was found that apricot varieties with chilling tolerance during storage were all from the northwestern region of China where diurnal temperature differences and rapid climate changes occur. In conclusion, maintaining the balance of ROS production and removal in apricots during cold storage is a key factor to enhance the storage tolerance of apricots. Moreover, apricots with higher initial glycolic acid and bioactive substance contents are less susceptible to chilling injury.

The complete chloroplast genome of Carex laevissima Nakai (Cyperaceae).

Carex laevissima Nakai 1914 (Cyperaceae) is vital for ecological conservation and land virescence, and has high ornamental value. Here the chloroplast genome of Carex laevissima was assembled and systematically analyzed for further genetic research of Carex plants. The chloroplast sequence of Carex laevissima was 188,029 bp in length, including two inverted repeat (IR) regions of 36,699 bp each, a large single-copy (LSC) region of 106,171 bp and a small single-copy region (SSC) of 8460 bp. The overall GC content is 34.0%. It contains 133 genes, including 89 protein-coding, 36 tRNA, and eight rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Carex laevissima is most closely related to Carex neurocarpa.

Learnable Subspace Clustering.

This article studies the large-scale subspace clustering (LS2C) problem with millions of data points. Many popular subspace clustering methods cannot directly handle the LS2C problem although they have been considered to be state-of-the-art methods for small-scale data points. A simple reason is that these methods often choose all data points as a large dictionary to build huge coding models, which results in high time and space complexity. In this article, we develop a learnable subspace clustering paradigm to efficiently solve the LS2C problem. The key concept is to learn a parametric function to partition the high-dimensional subspaces into their underlying low-dimensional subspaces instead of the computationally demanding classical coding models. Moreover, we propose a unified, robust, predictive coding machine (RPCM) to learn the parametric function, which can be solved by an alternating minimization algorithm. Besides, we provide a bounded contraction analysis of the parametric function. To the best of our knowledge, this article is the first work to efficiently cluster millions of data points among the subspace clustering methods. Experiments on million-scale data sets verify that our paradigm outperforms the related state-of-the-art methods in both efficiency and effectiveness.

Correlation of CD38 expression with the progression of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome.

To assess the relationship between the expression of CD38 and the progression of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS), we determined the levels of CD38 during different phases of HFRS and evaluated the relationship between changes in CD38 expression and the progression of HFRS. The expression of CD38 in 68 patients with HFRS was analyzed by flow cytometry, and this method was also used to determine the levels of CD4+T, CD8+T, and B lymphocytes and NK cells. Furthermore, creatinine (Cr), uric acid (UA), and urea in serum at each stage of HFRS were measured using commercial kits. The basic clinical reference values for leukocytes, platelets (PLT), and red blood cells were determined by conventional methods. The colloidal gold method was used to measure HFRS antibody levels in the patients. A significant change in CD38 expression was observed from the fever phase to the recovery phase in patients with HFRS. Moreover, the expression of CD38 was proportionally correlated with the levels of Cr, UA, and urea in serum. In contrast, there was an inverse correlation between CD38 and PLT. Interestingly, an increase in CD38 expression correlated with an increase in CD8+T lymphocytes, B cells, and NK cells, but with a decrease in CD4+T lymphocytes. The expression of CD38 is associated with the progression of HFRS, suggesting that it may be a potent indicator of the stages of this disorder.

Multiple 1-MCP treatment more effectively alleviated postharvest nectarine chilling injury than conventional one-time 1-MCP treatment by regulating ROS and energy metabolism.

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of different 1-MCP treatment patterns on alleviating chilling injury (CI) of postharvest nectarine stored at 0 ± 1 °C. Nectarine fruits were subjected to the following treatments: Single-High dose 1-MCP treatment (S-H): 1 µL L-1 application before storage; Multi-low dose 1-MCP treatment: (M-L) Five 0.25 µL L-1 applications after 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 d of storage; Multi-high dose 1-MCP treatment (M-H): Five 1 µL L-1 applications after 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 d of storage. The results showed that although all 1-MCP treatments alleviated CI, M-H 1-MCP treatment is the most effective pattern in alleviating CI of nectarine fruit in S-H, M-L, and M-H 1-MCP treatments. Moreover, this study indicated that the reduction of CI in nectarine by 1-MCP application was related to its regulations of ROS and energy metabolism.

Impact of near freezing temperature storage on postharvest quality and antioxidant capacity of two apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) cultivars.

To reduce the postharvest loss and improve apricot quality attributes, near freezing temperature (NFT) technology was applied to store apricot cultivars (var. "Xiaobai" and "Daliguang"). The NFT storage temperatures for the "Xiaobai" apricot and "Daliguang" apricot were determined as -1.9 to -2.3°C and -1.2 to -1.6°C, respectively. Storage at NFT significantly improved the storage quality of apricots by suppressing respiration rate, ethylene production, decay rate, internal browning index, membrane permeability, and malondialdehyde content. Apricots stored at NFT maintained higher firmness, total soluble solids, titrable acid, total phenolics, total flavonoids, and ascorbic acid content than those stored at 0-1°C. Additionally, NFT storage enhanced the capacity of radical scavenging and metal chelating, antioxidant properties in apricots compared to those stored at 0-1°C. Hence, NFT storage proved to be an effective method to improve the quality and antioxidant attributes of apricots. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: This study explored the effect of storage at near freezing temperature (NFT) on the postharvest quality of two cultivars of apricot (var. "Xiaobai" and "Daliguang"). We found that storage for 70 days at NFT resulted in better edible quality compared to storage at 0-1°C and 4-6°C. Apricot quality was determined in terms of respiration rate, ethylene production, decay rate, internal browning index, membrane permeability, malondialdehyde content, firmness, total soluble solids, titrable acid, total phenolics, total flavonoids, and ascorbic acid content. The antioxidant properties of the fruits were also retained during storage at NFT. We believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the preservative industry because it demonstrates the superiority of NFT storage over low temperature for apricots.

Different molecular weights chitosan coatings delay the senescence of postharvest nectarine fruit in relation to changes of redox state and respiratory pathway metabolism.

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of different molecular weights of chitosan treatment (LM 30 kDa; HM 120 kDa) on fruit senescence related to redox state and respiratory pathway metabolism in postharvest nectarine fruit stored at 25 °C for 8 days. The treatments of LM and HM chitosan both delayed senescence, which are due to inhibition of respiration rate, and enhanced the antioxidant system, as evidenced by the improvement of ASA-GSH cycle and total phenolics and flavonoids contents and decrease in H2O2 and MDA accumulation. Meanwhile, fruit treated with HM chitosan manifested better quality and redox state than LM. It is noteworthy that the results showed that HM chitosan notably suppressed the activity of SDH enzyme and increased the total activity of G-6-PDH and 6-PGDH. Accordingly, changed respiratory pathways by HM chitosan coating contributed to senescence retardation and modification of redox status in postharvest nectarine fruit.

Near-freezing temperature storage enhances chilling tolerance in nectarine fruit through its regulation of soluble sugars and energy metabolism.

To avoid chilling injury (CI) of nectarines during storage, the impact of near-freezing temperature (NFT) (-1.4 ±â€¯0.1 °C), 0 ±â€¯0.1 °C and 5 ±â€¯0.1 °C on CI incidence, ion leakage, levels of soluble sugars and enzymatic activities related to soluble sugars and energy metabolism, were investigated over five weeks. NFT-stored fruit showed no CI symptoms and significantly (P < 0.05) lower increase of ion leakage than those kept at 0 and 5 °C. NFT significantly (P < 0.05) diminished the activities of sucrose metabolism-associated enzymes leading to a higher level of sucrose in fruit, and maintained higher activities of hexokinase and fructokinase. Additionally, NFT-stored fruit exhibited significantly (P < 0.05) higher activities of energy metabolism-associated enzymes than fruit stored at 0 and 5 °C, leading to high levels of adenosine triphosphate and energy in fruit. These results indicated that NFT storage can effectively enhance chilling tolerance of nectarine fruit by inducing the metabolism of soluble carbohydrates and energy.

Antifungal Activity of an Abundant Thaumatin-Like Protein from Banana against Penicillium expansum, and Its Possible Mechanisms of Action.

Thaumatin-like protein from banana (designated BanTLP) has been purified by employing a simple protocol consisting of diethylaminoethyl Sephadex (DEAE⁻Sephadex) chromatography, gel filtration on Sephadex G50, and reversed-phase chromatography. The purified protein was identified by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, with an estimated molecular weight of 22.1 kDa. BanTLP effectively inhibited in vitro spore germination of Penicillium expansum, one of the main postharvest pathogens in fruits. This study further investigated the antifungal properties and underlying mechanisms of BanTLP against P. expansum. Results demonstrated that BanTLP exhibited antifungal activity in a wide pH range (4.0⁻10.0) at 20⁻50 °C. Propidium iodide (PI) influx and potassium release confirmed that BanTLP induced membrane disruption of the test pathogen, increasing the membrane permeability and disintegration of the cell. This led to cell death, as evidenced by the assays of thiobarbituric acid-reactive species (TBARS) content, the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and 1,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-hexatriene (DPH) fluorescence integrity. Ultrastructural alterations in P. expansum conidia after BanTLP treatment revealed severe damage to the cell wall. These results suggest that BanTLP purified from banana exerts antifungal activity against P. expansum by inducing plasma membrane disturbance and cell wall disorganization.

Protective effects of banana pectin against aluminum-induced cognitive impairment and aluminum accumulation in mice.

To investigate the effect of pectin on absorption and bio-toxicity of aluminum, pectin extract (100 mg kg-1 d-1) from banana pulp was orally administrated to aluminum exposed mice (35 mg kg-1 d-1) for 6 weeks. Our result showed that body weight gain of the mice treated with aluminum plus banana pectin was 32.5% higher than that of mice exposed to aluminum alone after 6 weeks of the administration. In both the step-down inhibitory avoidance task and Morris water maze test, memory retention of aluminum-exposed mice was significantly improved by the pectin administration. Treatment with banana pectin effectively prevented absorption of aluminum from the gastrointestinal tract, total aluminum excretion of mice treated with banana pectin plus aluminum was 9.3% higher than that of mice exposed to aluminum alone on the 12th day. Aluminum level in serum, cerebrum, or cerebellum of mice treated with aluminum plus banana pectin was 30.8%, 17.5%, or 17.9% lower than that of mice exposed to aluminum alone on the 42nd day, respectively. In conclusion, banana pectin extract can effectively reduce aluminum toxicity in mice.

Stacked Denoising Tensor Auto-Encoder for Action Recognition With Spatiotemporal Corruptions.

Spatially or temporally corrupted action videos are impractical for recognition via vision or learning models. It usually happens when streaming data are captured from unintended moving cameras, which bring occlusion or camera vibration and accordingly result in arbitrary loss of spatiotemporal information. In reality, it is intractable to deal with both spatial and temporal corruptions at the same time. In this paper, we propose a coupled stacked denoising tensor auto-encoder (CSDTAE) model, which approaches this corruption problem in a divide-and-conquer fashion by jointing both the spatial and temporal schemes together. In particular, each scheme is a SDTAE designed to handle either spatial or temporal corruption, respectively. SDTAE is composed of several blocks, each of which is a denoising tensor auto-encoder (DTAE). Therefore, CSDTAE is designed based on several DTAE building blocks to solve the spatiotemporal corruption problem simultaneously. In one DTAE, the video features are represented as a high-order tensor to preserve the spatiotemporal structure of data, where the temporal and spatial information are processed separately in different hidden layers via tensor unfolding. In summary, DTAE explores the spatial and temporal structure of the tensor representation, and SDTAE handles different corrupted ratios progressively to extract more discriminative features. CSDTAE couples the temporal and spatial corruptions of the same data through a thorough step-by-step procedure based on canonical correlation analysis, which integrates the two sub-problems into one problem. The key point is solving the spatiotemporal corruption in one model by considering them as noises in either spatial or temporal direction. Extensive experiments on three action data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model, especially when large volumes of corruption in the video.

A mutually beneficial relationship between hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes mitigates doxorubicin-induced toxicity.

Use of doxorubicin (DOX) is limited by its toxicity in multiple organs. However, the relationship between different organs in response to DOX-induced injury is not well understood. We found that partial hepatectomy correlated with increased DOX-induced heart injury in vivo while supernatant prepared from DOX-treated hepatocytes mitigated DOX-induced cytotoxicity of cardiomyocytes in vitro. Meanwhile, the supernatant of DOX-treated cardiomyocytes mitigated DOX-induced cytotoxicity of hepatocytes. Investigation of the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects found that interleukin 6 (IL-6) was significantly up-regulated in DOX-treated tissues and cells, and supernatant from IL-6 treated cells had a similar effect to that from DOX-treated cells. Although the concentration of secreted IL-6 in supernatant from DOX-treated cells did not significantly differ, blockade of IL-6 signaling, by overexpressing SOCS3, suppressed expression of the downstream molecules trefoil factor family 3 (TFF3) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), impaired the mutually beneficial relationship between hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes. In conclusion, our study shows that a mutually beneficial relationship exists between hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes during the acute injury induced by DOX. Moreover, it demonstrates that this phenomenon may be indirectly caused by increased IL-6 expression and the activation of the downstream molecular mediators TFF3 and HGF in hepatocytes and cardiomyocytes, respectively.

Preparation and application of immobilised ionic liquid in solid-phase extraction for determination of trace acrylamide in food samples coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography.

BACKGROUND: Acrylamide has attracted worldwide concerns because of its demonstrated neurotoxicity, genetoxicity and reproductive-development toxicity. It is necessary to control acrylamide production during food processing and protect human health. RESULTS: In this study, a functionalised material was synthesised by immobilising an ionic liquid onto an activated silica gel surface. The adsorption ability of the material towards acrylamide was evaluated, and the results showed that it had high adsorption capacity. Scatchard analysis indicated that the binding sites in the prepared material had two distinct groups (high and low affinity binding sites). The saturated adsorption capacity (Q(max,1)) was 7.9 mg g(-1) due to the high affinity binding sites, and another saturated adsorption capacity (Q(max,2)) was 2.3 mg g(-1) due to the low affinity binding sites. This prepared material also offered fast kinetics for adsorption of the acrylamide. Using this material as sorbent, a method of solid-phase extraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography (SPE-HPLC) for analysis of acrylamide in foods was developed. Under optimal conditions, the limit of detection (S/N = 3) of this method for acrylamide was 2.1 µg kg(-1), and the RSD for five replicate extractions of 50 µL(-1) acrylamide was 4.5%. The blank potato and bread crumb samples spiked with acrylamide at different levels of 10.0 and 15.0 µg kg(-1) were extracted and determined respectively by this developed method, and recoveries ranging from 83.0% to 89.1% were obtained. Finally, this method was applied to quantitative detection of acrylamide in bread crust and cracker samples. CONCLUSION: With high sensitivity and pre-treatment simplicity, this SPE-HPLC method could provide a new tool for the rapid determination of acrylamide in the food samples.

Dishevelled-1 (Dvl-1) protein: a potential participant of oxidative stress induced by selenium deficiency.

Oxidative stress induced by selenium deficiency has been shown to be associated with cardiovascular diseases. Nevertheless, the mechanism associated with oxidative stress induced by selenium deficiency is poorly understood. In the present study, 36 weaning C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into 4 groups as follows: control (n =9), 4-week selenium deficiency (n =9), 8-week selenium deficiency (n = 9), and 12-week selenium deficiency (n =9). The levels of myocardial glutathione peroxidase (GPx), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and malondialdehyde (MDA) were determined by Western blotting or commercial kits. Real-time PCR was performed to detect the mRNA expression of dishevelled-1 (Dvl-1) protein. Western blotting was conducted to evaluate the protein expression levels of Dvl-1 and ß-catenin. Our results demonstrated that the levels of GPx and SOD were significantly reduced, along with an increase in MDA in selenium-deficient mice. Importantly, Dvl-1 and ß-catenin were clearly upregulated under oxidative stress. Collectively, our findings indicate that Dvl-1 may be an underlying participant of oxidative stress induced by selenium deficiency.

Mmu-miR-702 functions as an anti-apoptotic mirtron by mediating ATF6 inhibition in mice.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a group of endogenous, small, noncoding RNAs that function as key post-transcriptional regulators. miRNAs are involved in many biological processes including apoptosis. In this study, mouse miR-702 (mmu-miR-702), a mirtron derived from the 13th intron of the Plod3 gene, was identified as a regulator of anti-apoptosis. mmu-miR-702 was down-regulated after treatment with the apoptosis-inducer isoproterenol both in vivo and in vitro. According to over-expression experiments, mmu-miR-702 inhibited apoptosis as well as the expression levels of a subset of apoptosis-related genes including activating transcription factor 6 (ATF6). An interaction between mmu-miR-702 and the ATF6 3'-UTR binding site was confirmed using luciferase reporter and western blot assays. This is the first report of ATF6 interaction with miRNA. Although the possible existence of miR-702 in the human genome is low, our results indicate that mirtrons also participate in the process of apoptosis and may provide a novel study strategy for apoptosis.