A Novel Prognostic Ferroptosis-Related lncRNA Signature Associated with Immune Landscape in Invasive Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer (BC) represents the most common form of malignant tumors in women. However, the effectiveness of BC immunotherapy remains very low. Ferroptosis is a recently described form of programmed cell death which has unique characteristics, and associated long-chain noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) are thought to influence the occurrence and development of a variety of tumors. We identified 1,636 lncRNAs associated with ferroptosis in BC patients. 299 differentially expressed ferroptosis-related lncRNAs were subjected to univariate, LASSO regression, and multivariate Cox regression analyses to construct a ten ferroptosis-related lncRNA signature. This ten ferroptosis-related lncRNA signature performed very well in predicting survival of BC patients, and the risk score of the mRNA signature was identified as an independent prognostic factor in this cancer entity. In addition, the signature could be used to predict the immune landscape of BC patients. Low-risk patients had enriched immune-related pathways and more infiltration of most types of immune cells. The signature was also associated with the tumor mutation burden in BC. The results have allowed us to assess the potential for immunotherapy targets exposed by this model. The ferroptosis-related lncRNA risk model reported in the current study has clinical utility in BC prognosis and predicted immunotherapy response.

Variation in body mass and morphological characters in Macaca mulatta brevicaudus from Hainan, China.

The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) is the most widely distributed nonhuman primate species in the world, with six subspecies distributed through China. From 2012 to 2014, we conducted studies on the body mass and morphological variation of the southernmost subspecies M. m. brevicaudus in Nanwan Nature Reserve for Rhesus Macaque, Hainan, China. We compared measurements with other populations of this species. We also investigated the inter-group body mass variation from seven provisioned free-ranging groups in our study site. Our results show that M. m. brevicaudus has the smallest body size, the smallest body mass, and the shortest tail among rhesus macaque subspecies. Its sexual dimorphism score is also among the lowest, which is similar to other southern distributed subspecies in China, but smaller than northern distributed subspecies. We found that the average body mass of female macaques is not correlated with their dominance ranks. There are significant differences in body mass among the seven adjacent study groups at the same site, suggesting the existence of inter-group competition. Average body mass of a group is better described by a quadratic function of group size than a linear one as predicted by the socio-ecological model. Am. J. Primatol. 78:679-698, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.