Rapid determination of total flavonoid content, xanthine oxidase inhibitory activities, and antioxidant activity in Prunus mume by near-infrared spectroscopy.

Evaluating the quality of herbal medicine based on the content and activity of its main components is highly beneficial. Developing an eco-friendly determination method has significant application potential. In this study, we propose a new method to simultaneously predict the total flavonoid content (TFC), xanthine oxidase inhibitory (XO) activity, and antioxidant activity (AA) of Prunus mume using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR). Using the sodium nitrite-aluminum nitrate-sodium hydroxide colorimetric method, uric acid colorimetric method, and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH) free radical scavenging activity as reference methods, we analyzed TFC, XO, and AA in 90 P. mume samples collected from different locations in China. The solid samples were subjected to NIR. By employing spectral preprocessing and optimizing spectral bands, we established a rapid prediction model for TFC, XO, and AA using partial least squares regression (PLS). To improve the model's performance and eliminate irrelevant variables, competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) was used to calculate the pretreated full spectrum. Evaluation model indicators included the root mean square error of cross-validation (RMSECV) and determination coefficient (R2) values. The TFC, XO, and AA model, combining optimal spectral preprocessing and spectral bands, had RMSECV values of 0.139, 0.117, and 0.121, with RCV2 values exceeding 0.92. The root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) for the TFC, XO, and AA model on the prediction set was 0.301, 0.213, and 0.149, with determination coefficient (RP2) values of 0.915, 0.933, and 0.926. The results showed a strong correlation between NIR with TFC, XO, and AA in P. mume. Therefore, the established model was effective, suitable for the rapid quantification of TFC, XO, and AA. The prediction method is simple and rapid, and can be extended to the study of medicinal plant content and activity.

Efficient Fabrication of Quartz Glass Using Laser Coaxial Powder-Fed Additive Manufacturing Approach.

This article investigates a laser-directed energy deposition additive manufacturing (AM) method, based on coaxial powder feeding, for preparing quartz glass. Through synergistic optimization of line deposition and plane deposition experiments, key parameters of laser coaxial powder feeding AM were identified. The corresponding mechanical properties, thermal properties, and microstructure of the bulk parts were analyzed. The maximum mechanical strength of the obtained quartz glass element reached 72.36 ± 5.98 MPa, which is ca. 95% that of quartz glass prepared by traditional methods. The thermal properties of the obtained quartz glass element were also close to those prepared by traditional methods. The present research indicates that one can use laser AM technology that is based on coaxial powder feeding to form quartz glass with high density and good thermodynamic properties. Such quartz glass has substantial potential in, for example, optics and biomedicine.

SME-MFP: A novel spatiotemporal neural network with multiangle initialization embedding toward multifunctional peptides prediction.

As a promising alternative to conventional antibiotic drugs in the biomedical field, functional peptide has been widely used in disease treatment owing to its low toxicity, high absorption rate, and biological activity. Recently, several machine learning methods have been developed for functional peptide prediction. However, the main research heavily relies on statistical features and few consider multifunctional peptide identification. So, we propose SME-MFP, a novel predictor in the imbalanced multi-label functional peptide datasets. First, we employ physicochemical and evolutionary information to represent the peptide sequence's initialization features from multiple perspectives. Second, the features are fused and then put into spatial feature extractors, where the residual connection and multiscale convolutional neural network extract more discriminative features of different lengths' peptide sequences. Besides, we also design AFT-based temporal feature extractors to fully capture the global interactions of the sequences. Finally, devising a new loss to replace the traditional cross entropy loss to settle the class imbalance problems. The results show that our framework not only enhances the model's ability to capture sequence features effectively, but also accuracy improves by 3.89% over existing methods on public peptide datasets.

Bayesian diagnostic test evaluation and true prevalence estimation of malnutrition in gastric cancer patients.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Malnutrition is prevalent among gastric cancer (GC) patients, necessitating early assessment of nutritional status to guide monitoring and interventions for improved outcomes. We aim to evaluate the accuracy and prognostic capability of three nutritional tools in GC patients, providing insights for clinical implementation. METHODS: The present study is an analysis of data from 1308 adult GC patients recruited in a multicenter from July 2013 to July 2018. Nutritional status was assessed using Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002), Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) and Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria. Bayesian latent class model (LCM) estimated the malnutrition prevalence of GC patients, sensitivity and specificity of nutritional tools. Cox regression model analyzed the relationship between nutritional status and overall survival (OS) in GC patients. RESULTS: Among 1308 GC patients, NRS-2002, PG-SGA, and GLIM identified 50.46%, 76.76%, and 68.81% as positive, respectively. Bayesian LCM analysis revealed that PG-SGA had the highest sensitivity (0.96) for malnutrition assessment, followed by GLIM criteria (0.78) and NRS-2002 (0.65). Malnutrition or being at risk of malnutrition were identified as independent prognostic factors for OS. Use any of these tools improved survival prediction in TNM staging system. CONCLUSION: PG-SGA is the most reliable tool for diagnosing malnutrition in GC patients, whereas NRS-2002 is suitable for nutritional screening in busy clinical practice. Given the lower sensitivity of NRS-2002, direct utilization of GLIM for nutritional assessment may be necessary. Each nutritional tool should be associated with a specific course of action, although further research is needed.

Shading treatment during late stage of seed development promotes subsequent seed germination and seedlings establishment in sunflower.

During the sunflower seed production process, the role of artificial shading treatment (ST) in seed development and subsequent seed germination remains largely unknown. In the present study, sunflower mother plants were artificially shaded during 1-34 (full period-ST, FST), 1-22 (early period-ST, EST), and 22-34 (late period-ST, LST) days after pollination (DAP), to examine the effects of parental shading on subsequent seed germination. Both FST and EST significantly reduced the photosynthetic efficiency of sunflower, manifested as decreased seed dry weight and unfavorable seed germination. On the contrary, LST remarkably increased seed dry weight and promoted subsequent seed germination and seedling establishment. LST enhanced the activities of several key enzymes involved in triglyceride anabolism and corresponding-genes expression, which in turn increased the total fatty acid contents and altered the fatty acid composition. During early germination, the key enzyme activities involved in triglyceride disintegration and corresponding-gene expressions in LST seeds were apparently higher than those in seeds without the shading treatment (WST). Consistently, LST seeds had significant higher contents of ATP and soluble sugar. Moreover, enzyme activities related to abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis and corresponding gene expressions decreased within LST seeds, whereas the enzyme activities and corresponding gene expressions associated with gibberellin (GA) biosynthesis were increased. These results were also evidenced by the reduced ABA content but elevated GA level within LST seeds, giving rise to higher GA/ABA ratio. Our findings suggested that LST could promote sunflower seed development and subsequent seed germination as well as seedling establishment through modulating the dynamic metabolism of triglycerides, fatty acid and GA/ABA balance.

Spermidine enhances heat tolerance of rice seeds during mid-filling stage and promote subsequent seed germination.

Introduction: Heat stress is a vital factor which restricts rice seed quality and yield. However, the response mechanism to heat stress in the mid filling stage of rice seed is unclear. Methods: In the present study we integrated phenotypic analysis with biochemical, hormone, and gene expression analysis in order to explore technologies for improving rice seeds heat tolerance and subsequent seed germination. Results: Spermidine (Spd) application effectively alleviated the damage of heat stress treatment during mid-filling stage (HTM, 12-20 days after pollination) on seed development, promoted subsequent seed germination and seedlings establishment. Spd significantly increased seed dry weight, starch and amylose contents during seed development under heat stress, and improved seed germinate, seedlings establishment and seedling characteristics during germination time. Biochemical analysis indicated that, HTM significantly decreased the activities of several starch synthase enzymes and led to a decrease in starch content. While Spd treatment significantly enhanced the activities of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylas and granule-bound starch synthase, as well as the corresponding-genes expressions in HTM rice seeds, resulting in the increases of amylose and total starch contents. In addition, Spd significantly increased the catalase and glutathione reductase activities together with corresponding-genes expressions, and lowered the overaccumulation of H2O2 and malondialdehyde in HTM seeds. In the subsequent seed germination process, HTM+Spd seeds exhibited dramatically up-regulated levels of soluble sugars, glucose, ATP and energy charges. Consistently, HTM+Spd seeds showed significantly increased of α-amylose and α-glucosidase activities as well as corresponding-genes expressions during early germination. Moreover, HTM evidently increased the abscisic acid (ABA) content, decreased the gibberellin (GA) content, and accordingly significantly declined the GA/ABA ratio during early rice seeds germination. However, Spd treatment did not significantly affect the metabolism of GA and ABA in seed germination stage. Discussion: The present study suggested that Spd treatment could effectively alleviate the negative impact of HTM on seed development and the subsequent seed germination, which might be closely correlated with starch synthesis and antioxidant defense during seed filling period, starch decomposition and energy supply in seed germination period.

Variational gated autoencoder-based feature extraction model for inferring disease-miRNA associations based on multiview features.

MicroRNAs (miRNA) play critical roles in diverse biological processes of diseases. Inferring potential disease-miRNA associations enable us to better understand the development and diagnosis of complex human diseases via computational algorithms. The work presents a variational gated autoencoder-based feature extraction model to extract complex contextual features for inferring potential disease-miRNA associations. Specifically, our model fuses three different similarities of miRNAs into a comprehensive miRNA network and then combines two various similarities of diseases into a comprehensive disease network, respectively. Then, a novel graph autoencoder is designed to extract multilevel representations based on variational gate mechanisms from heterogeneous networks of miRNAs and diseases. Finally, a gate-based association predictor is devised to combine multiscale representations of miRNAs and diseases via a novel contrastive cross-entropy function, and then infer disease-miRNA associations. Experimental results indicate that our proposed model achieves remarkable association prediction performance, proving the efficacy of the variational gate mechanism and contrastive cross-entropy loss for inferring disease-miRNA associations.

Apple polyphenol biotransformation using probiotics in vitro and dynamic simulated digestion by bionic rats.

BACKGROUND: The present study investigated the effects of fermentation by Lactobacillus rhamnosus zrx01 (LR-zrx01), Lactobacillus acidophilus zrx02 (LA-zrx02), and Lactobacillus plantarum zrx03 (LP-zrx03), as well as dynamic simulated digestion by bionic rats, on the biotransformation and antioxidant potential of apple polyphenols. Polyphenols were determined by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, the dynamic simulated digestion of fermented apple pulp was determined by bionic rats, and the antibacterial and antioxidant activities were analyzed. RESULTS: The polyphenol content of apple pulp fermented using the three strains was respectively 1.41, 1.38, and 1.36 times that of non-fermented pulp. The antibacterial activity of apple pulp improved dramatically after fermentation. Moreover, the antioxidant potential of apple pulp increased after fermentation and digestion. After dynamic simulated digestion by bionic rats, the polyphenol content in unfermented and the three fermented groups increased significantly by 1.19, 1.23, 1.20, and 1.19 times compared to that before digestion, respectively. The major polyphenols in each group with obvious changes were epicatechin, rutin, kaempferol, quercetin-3 galactoside, p-coumaric acid, and two unknown substances, 1 and 2. CONCLUSION: Fermented and digested apple polyphenols showed better biotransformation effects and mostly existed in the form of small molecules, which was conducive to the improvement of polyphenol bioavailability and beneficial to the absorption of active substances by the human body. These findings build a foundation for the development of functional food beverages. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Association of Body Mass Index and the Risk of Gastro-Esophageal Cancer: A Mendelian Randomization Study in a Japanese Population.

There are growing concerns that body mass index (BMI) is related to cancer risk at various anatomical sites, including the upper gastrointestinal tract, and the existence of a causal relationship remains unclear. The Mendelian randomization (MR) method uses instrumental genetic variables of risk factors to explore whether a causal relationship exists while preventing confounding. In our study, genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from the BioBank Japan (BBJ) project were used. Genetic variants were chosen as instrumental variables using inverse-variance weighting (IVW), MR-Egger regression and weighted-median methods to estimate the causal relationship between BMI and the risk of gastro-esophageal cancer. We found no evidence to support a causal association between BMI and risk of gastric cancer [odds ratio (OR) =0.99 per standard deviation (SD) increase in BMI; 95% confidence interval (CI): (0.76-1.30); P = 0.96] or esophageal cancer [0.78(0.50-1.22); P = 0.28] using the IVW method. Sensitivity analysis did not reveal any sign of horizontal pleiotropy. Additionally, in the gender-stratified analysis, no causal association was found. Findings from this study do not support a causal effect of BMI on gastro-esophageal cancer risk. However, we cannot rule out a modest or nonlinear effect of BMI.

Genetic variant in miR-17-92 cluster binding sites is associated with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma risk in Chinese population.

BACKGROUND: Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located in microRNA (miRNA) binding sites can affect the interactions between miRNAs and target genes, which is related to cancer susceptibility and tumorigenesis. However, the association between SNPs located in miR-17-92 cluster binding sites and ESCC risk remains unclear. Therefore, we aimed to explore the relationship between polymorphisms in miR-17-92 cluster binding sites and ESCC susceptibility. METHODS: Six SNPs in the binding sites of miR-17-92 cluster were selected using bioinformatics databases, and their association with ESCC risk was investigated in a case-control study (including 488 cases and 512 controls) based on the population from high incidence areas of ESCC in China. We evaluated the SNP-SNP and SNP-smoking interactions using generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction (GMDR). Moreover, the expression of the miR-17-92 cluster and its target genes was determined in ESCC and adjacent normal tissues by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The dual-luciferase reporter assay was conducted to verify the effect of SNPs on the binding affinity between miRNAs and target genes. RESULTS: We found that the SNP rs1804506 C > T had a significant association with the decreased ESCC risk. The SNP rs1804506 T allele was associated with a significantly decreased risk of ESCC in the additive model (OR = 0.817, 95% CI = 0.681-0.981, P = 0.030). The rs1804506 T allele had more striking effects on reducing ESCC risk in older individuals, female or non-smoker subgroups. We also found a significant interaction effect between rs1366600 and smoking by GMDR methods (P = 0.011). Additionally, the expression levels of miR-19a-3p and TGFBR3 were significantly downregulated in ESCC tissues compared with normal tissues, and the carriers of rs1804506 TT genotype had lower expression level of TGFBR3 than those of rs1804506 CC/CT genotype. Following dual-luciferase reporter assay showed that the rs1804506 T allele reduced the binding of miR-19a-3p and TGFBR3 3'-UTR. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the rs1804506 polymorphism in miR-17-92 cluster binding sites contributes to the susceptibility of ESCC, which might provide new clues and scientific evidence for the etiology and biomarkers for the prevention and treatment of ESCC.

Comparative analysis of malnutrition diagnosis methods in lung cancer patients using a Bayesian latent class model.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: There are no consensus criteria for malnutrition diagnosis in clinical settings, the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria were developed to facilitate global comparisons of malnutrition prevalence, interventions and outcomes. Validation to assess usefulness in clinical practice is essential, however, the imperfect nature of reference standards used in concurrent validation may result in biased estimates of diagnostic accuracy. The Bayesian latent class model (BLCM) can assess the diagnostic performance when a "gold standard" is absent. This study's objective was to assess the diagnostic performance of the GLIM criteria in comparison with the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002) and the Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) in lung cancer patients using a BLCM. We hypothesized that the GLIM criteria are more sensitive and specific for malnutrition diagnosis in lung cancer patients. METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN: 1,384 patient records retrospectively obtained from the "Investigation on Nutrition Status and its clinical outcome of common Cancers" (INSCOC) study were used to determine the prevalence of malnutrition, sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) by applying a BLCM. RESULTS: The prevalence of malnutrition was 0.56. The sensitivity and specificity of the GLIM criteria were Se: 0.85 and Sp: 0.88; Se: 0.74 and Sp: 0.85 for NRS-2002 and Se: 0.96 and Sp: 0.89 for PG-SGA. CONCLUSIONS: Although the GLIM criteria were acceptable for malnutrition diagnosis, PG-SGA is superior for determining cancer-associated malnutrition. Because of its fair sensitivity, NRS-2002 was best equipped to screen out patients not at nutritional risk.

The performance of three nutritional tools varied in colorectal cancer patients: a retrospective analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Nutritional screening tools should be sensitive, simple, and easy to use. Differing opinions among clinicians concern the simplicity of the three tools-the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria, Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002), and Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA). For each tool, we estimated prediction of overall survival (OS) in tumor staging, sensitivity, and specificity. The NRS-2002 is favored by clinicians because it is simple to use. We compared its sensitivity and specificity with the GLIM and PG-SGA. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: This is an analysis of data from 1,358 adult colorectal cancer patients recruited in a multicenter from July 2013 to July 2018. RESULTS: In Kaplan-Meier models, each tool was found to be significantly predictive of OS: NRS-2002 (1.28), GLIM (1.49), and PG-SGA (1.42). Use of any tool improved prediction of survival at tumor staging. NRS-2002 has superior specificity (0.90) to diagnose patients without nutritional deficits (GLIM = 0.62 and PG-SGA = 0.82). CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence for the superiority of NRS-2002 to accurately identify colorectal cancer patients without nutritional limitations. Compared with the complexity of the other tools, NRS-2002 is the simplest tool to use in routine nutritional screening in busy clinical practice.

Ultrasonic Waves Regulate Antioxidant Defense and Gluconeogenesis to Improve Germination From Naturally Aged Soybean Seeds.

Soybean seeds contain substantial triacylglycerols and fatty acids that are prone to oxidation during storage, contributing to the dramatic deterioration of seed vigor. This study reports an ultrasonic waves treatment (UWT), which is a physical method capable of promoting the germination ability of the aged soybean seeds by regulating the antioxidant defense and gluconeogenesis. Germination test revealed that UWT significantly increased the germination rate and seedlings' establishment of the soybean seeds stored for 12 months, although insignificantly impacting the vigor of fresh (stored for 1 month) and short-term stored (for 6 months) seeds. Further biochemical analysis revealed that UWT decreased the hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), O2⋅-, and malondialdehyde contents in the aged soybean seeds during early germination. Consistently, UWT prominently elevated the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, and also the corresponding gene expressions. Besides, the soluble sugar content of UWT was significantly higher than that of the untreated aged seeds. Analysis of enzyme activity showed UWT significantly upregulated the activities of several key enzymes in gluconeogenesis and the transcription levels of corresponding genes. Moreover, UWT enhanced the invertase activity within aged seeds, which was responsible for catalyzing sucrose hydrolysis for forming glucose and fructose. In summary, UWT improved germination and seedlings establishment of aged soybean seeds by regulating antioxidant defense and gluconeogenesis. This study expands the application of ultrasonication in agricultural production and further clarifies the physiological and molecular mechanisms of the aged seed germination, aiming to provide theoretical and practical guidance for seed quality and safety.

Diagnostic Performance of SGA, PG-SGA and MUST for Malnutrition Assessment in Adult Cancer Patients: A Systematic Literature Review and Hierarchical Bayesian Meta-Analysis.

Because cancer-associated malnutrition is a major health complication, timely nutritional screening is of utmost importance. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of three tools in order to identify the method with the best diagnostic performance. PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane central register of controlled trials were searched for articles published from database inception to January 2021. Studies that assessed the diagnostic accuracy of the SGA, PG-SGA or MUST in adult cancer patients were included. In order to evaluate the quality of each included study, the QUADAS-2 tool was used after which a meta-analysis was conducted using the hierarchical bivariate model. This model accounts for both within and between study variability. 16 studies (18 datasets) were included to evaluate these tools. The overall sensitivity and specificity for SGA was 0.69 and 0.80, 0.95 and 0.81 for PG-SGA, along with 0.83 and 0.83 for MUST respectively. An assessment of the likelihood ratios showed that PG-SGA had the highest LR + and the lowest LR-, it therefore has the best diagnostic performance to confirm malnutrition in adult cancer patients.

CSN improves seed vigor of aged sunflower seeds by regulating the fatty acid, glycometabolism, and abscisic acid metabolism.

Introduction: Sunflower seeds possess higher oil content than do cereal crop seeds. Storage of sunflower seeds is accompanied by loss of seed vigor and oxidation of storage and membrane lipids. Objectives: This study first reported that compound sodium nitrophenolate (CSN), a new plant growth modulator, improved the germination and seedling emergence of aged sunflower seeds. The present study provide a future reference as to the potential applications of CSN and the regulation mechanism of exogenous substances in increasing aged crop seed vigor. Methods: Phenotypic analysis was performed to investigate the effect of CSN on germination and seedling emergence from naturally- and artificially-aged sunflower seeds. The biochemical and enzyme activity analysis were conducted to test the CSN-induced effect on glycometabolism, fatty acid and abscisic acid metabolism. Meanwhile, gene expression analysis was carried out to detect the changes in the transcription level of sunflower seeds during early germination period after CSN treatment. Results: CSN application significantly increased the germination rate and seedling emergence rate of sunflower seeds under natural and artificial aging. Biochemical analysis indicated that, CSN treatment significantly enhanced the sucrose and fructose contents in aged sunflower seeds during early germination period. Moreover, the contents of several different fatty acids in CSN-treated sunflower seeds also significantly increased. Enzyme activity analysis revealed that CSN treatment remarkably up-regulated the activities of several critical enzymes related to triacylglycerol hydrolysis. Consequently, the transcription levels of the above key enzymes-related synthetic genes were also significantly up-regulated in CSN treatment. Furthermore, CSN treatment significantly decreased abscisic acid (ABA) content through the regulation of the gene expressions and activities of metabolism related-enzymes. Conclusion: Taken together, the contribution of CSN to the improvement of aged sunflower seed germination and seedling emergence might be closely related to the fatty acid, glycometabolism, and ABA metabolism.

Exposure to outdoor air pollution at different periods and the risk of leukemia: a meta-analysis.

The causes of leukemia remain largely unknown; our aims were to examine the association between the exposure to outdoor air pollution and leukemia risk and to explore the effect of this exposure during different periods of pregnancy and early life. We searched for all case-control and cohort studies published before February 20, 2021, which measured the risk of leukemia in relation to exposure to the air pollutants: particulate matter, benzene, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). We then carried out a meta-analysis and calculated the summary relative risks (RRs) of leukemia by using a random-effects model. The potential dose-response relationship was further explored. The results showed that the highest exposure to benzene (RR: 1.20, 95%CI: 1.06-1.35) and NO2 (RR: 1.04, 95%CI; 1.02-1.08) were positively correlated with leukemia risk when compared to the lowest exposure categories for each air pollutant. During pregnancy, exposure to benzene in the third trimester, as well as exposure to NO2 in the second trimester and entire pregnancy, could also increase the risk of leukemia. In the dose-response analysis, benzene exposure and NO2 exposure were linearly associated with the risk of leukemia. Other air pollutants did not have a statistical correlation with leukemia risk. There was a certain degree of publication bias in studies on benzene. Overall, our results support a link between outdoor air pollution and leukemia risk, particularly due to benzene and NO2. Prospero Registration Number: PROSPERO CRD42020207025.

Systematic Identification of circRNA-miRNA-mRNA Regulatory Network in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are described as endogenous non-coding RNAs that have been reported to play important roles in the development and progression of cancers. This study aimed to reveal the circRNA-related regulatory mechanism in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). METHODS: A genome-wide circRNA microarray assay was performed to profile the expression of circRNAs in the blood of preoperative ESCC patients and healthy controls. A systematic method of data mining was performed to identify the differentially expressed miRNAs (DEmiRs) and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) based on the metaMA and RankProd analysis. Bioinformatics analyses and multiple tools were employed to construct the potential circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory network. RESULTS: Thirty-three differentially expressed circRNAs were identified in the ESCC blood, including 31 downregulated and two upregulated circRNAs in the blood of ESCC patients compared with the healthy controls. Twenty-three DEmiRs and 2,220 DEGs were obtained by the integration of microarray datasets. An ESCC-associated circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network was constructed based on 31 circRNAs, 3 DEmiRs, and 190 DEGs. Enrichment analyses indicated that the DEGs were associated with a series of biological processes and cancer-related pathways. The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was generated by the 190 DEGs, with 10 hub genes verified in the network. Subsequently, a sub-network was established for ESCC, which included 29 circRNAs, 2 miRNAs, and 10 hub genes. CONCLUSION: Our study provided a novel clue to help understand the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory mechanism, highlighting the potential roles of circRNAs in the pathogenesis and development of ESCC.

Nutritional screening tools for adult cancer patients: A hierarchical Bayesian latent-class meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Cancer treatment requires attentiveness to its broader effect on the body. Cancer's effect on appetite, strength, and body composition is contained in the summary term malnutrition. The tools used to detect malnutrition are a critical part of effective cancer care. In clinical care, selection of any specific tool is random. The relative validity of these tools have not been systematically compared. Using hierarchical Bayesian latent-class meta-analysis methods, this report compares three tools used for adult cancer patients - the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002) and the Patient Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA). METHOD: Drawing from English and Chinese language databases, a broad pool of eligible studies were identified for further selection and assessment. Using the hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic (HSROC) model, pooled sensitivity, specificity, and other measurements the accuracy of the three tools were compared. RESULT: A total of 37 eligible studies involving the MNA, NRS-2002 and PG-SGA were included in this meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity was 0.910 (95% CI: 0.763 to 0.970) for MNA, 0.747 (95% CI: 0.680 to 0.804) for NRS-2002, and 0.964 (95% CI: 0.913 to 0.986) for PG-SGA. The pooled specificity was 0.720 (95% CI: 0.623 to 0.800) for MNA, 0.854 (95% CI: 0.808 to 0.891) for NRS-2002, 0.905 (95% CI: 0.807 to 0.956) for PG-SGA, respectively. The back-calculated likelihood ratio (LR) showed that MNA had a low negative likelihood ratio (LR-), NRS-2002 corresponded to a high positive likelihood ratio (LR+) and PG-SGA represented the best LR+ and LR-. CONCLUSIONS: While there is no standard approach to assessment of malnutrition, the PG-SGA has the best diagnostic performance with cancer patients. Further work is needed to refine the utility of these tools in larger clinical samples.

Partial purification and characterization of a broad-spectrum bacteriocin produced by a Lactobacillus plantarum zrx03 isolated from infant's feces.

Lactobacillus plantarum zrx03 was a bacteriocin-producing strain isolated from infant's feces. The fermentation supernatant produced by this strain could strongly inhibit Escherichia coli JM109 ATCC 67387, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, and Listeria monocytogenes CICC 21633, in which the diameter of inhibition zone was 12.83 ± 0.62 mm, 15.08 ± 0.31 mm, 6.75 ± 0.20 mm, respectively, compared with lactic acid bacteria N1, N2, M13, M21, M31, and M37. According to amplification of 16S rRNA gene and identification of phylogenetic tree, this strain had a 1,450 bp sequence and 100% identity to the L. plantarum strain. Based on the influence of different protease treatments, such as pepsin, trypsin, papain, and proteinase K on the antimicrobial activity, this antimicrobial substance was considered to be a natural protein. Using bacteriocin produced by this strain as study object of this experiment, it had been extracted from ammonium sulfate precipitation and different organic solvents. The results showed that ethyl acetate was selected as the optimal solution to crude extraction of bacteriocin after comparing ammonium sulfate precipitation method and organic solvent extraction method, such as n-butanol, n-hexane, dichloromethane, trichloromethane, in which the diameter of the inhibition zones was above 28 mm. Results also showed the inhibition spectrum of the obtained bacteriocin had a broad spectrum of inhibition which could inhibit Gram-positive, Gram-negative, yeast. Especially, it could effectively inhibit S. aureus ATCC 25923, Bacillus subtilis CICC 10002, Bacillus anthracis CICC 20443, E. coli JM109 ATCC 67387, and Salmonella CMCC 541, and the zone diameter of inhibition has reached more than 28 mm. Moreover, it had a good thermal stability which antibacterial activity was retained 70.58% after treatment at 121°C for 30 min, and pH-stability was between pH 2.0-9.0. These results suggested bacteriocin produced by L. plantarum zrx03 had potential application prospects in food preservation.