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| 2. |
- Klionsky, Daniel J., et al.
(author)
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Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy
- 2012
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In: Autophagy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1554-8635 .- 1554-8627. ; 8:4, s. 445-544
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. A key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process vs. those that measure flux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process); thus, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation needs to be differentiated from stimuli that result in increased autophagic activity, defined as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (in most higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the field understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field.
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| 3. |
- Wang, Zhaoming, et al.
(author)
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Imputation and subset-based association analysis across different cancer types identifies multiple independent risk loci in the TERT-CLPTM1L region on chromosome 5p15.33
- 2014
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In: Human Molecular Genetics. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0964-6906 .- 1460-2083. ; 23:24, s. 6616-6633
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have mapped risk alleles for at least 10 distinct cancers to a small region of 63 000 bp on chromosome 5p15.33. This region harbors the TERT and CLPTM1L genes; the former encodes the catalytic subunit of telomerase reverse transcriptase and the latter may play a role in apoptosis. To investigate further the genetic architecture of common susceptibility alleles in this region, we conducted an agnostic subset-based meta-analysis (association analysis based on subsets) across six distinct cancers in 34 248 cases and 45 036 controls. Based on sequential conditional analysis, we identified as many as six independent risk loci marked by common single-nucleotide polymorphisms: five in the TERT gene (Region 1: rs7726159, P = 2.10 × 10(-39); Region 3: rs2853677, P = 3.30 × 10(-36) and PConditional = 2.36 × 10(-8); Region 4: rs2736098, P = 3.87 × 10(-12) and PConditional = 5.19 × 10(-6), Region 5: rs13172201, P = 0.041 and PConditional = 2.04 × 10(-6); and Region 6: rs10069690, P = 7.49 × 10(-15) and PConditional = 5.35 × 10(-7)) and one in the neighboring CLPTM1L gene (Region 2: rs451360; P = 1.90 × 10(-18) and PConditional = 7.06 × 10(-16)). Between three and five cancers mapped to each independent locus with both risk-enhancing and protective effects. Allele-specific effects on DNA methylation were seen for a subset of risk loci, indicating that methylation and subsequent effects on gene expression may contribute to the biology of risk variants on 5p15.33. Our results provide strong support for extensive pleiotropy across this region of 5p15.33, to an extent not previously observed in other cancer susceptibility loci.
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| 4. |
- Liang, Jianxin, et al.
(author)
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Mechanistic study of transcription factor Sox18 during heart development
- 2024
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In: General and Comparative Endocrinology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0016-6480 .- 1095-6840. ; 350
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Heart development is a delicate and complex process regulated by coordination of various signaling pathways. In this study, we investigated the role of sox18 in heart development by modulating Wnt/β-Catenin signaling pathways. Our spatiotemporal expression analysis revealed that sox18 is mainly expressed in the heart, branchial arch, pharyngeal arch, spinal cord, and intersegmental vessels at the tailbud stage of Xenopus tropicalis embryo. Overexpression of sox18 in the X. tropicalis embryos causes heart edema, while loss-of-function of sox18 can change the signal of developmental heart marker gata4 at different stages, suggesting that sox18 plays an essential role in the development of the heart. Knockdown of SOX18 in human umbilical vein endothelial cells suggests a link between Sox18 and β-CATENIN, a key regulator of the Wnt signaling pathway. Sox18 negatively regulates islet1 and tbx3, the downstream factors of Wnt/β-Catenin signaling, during the linear heart tube formation and the heart looping stage. Taken together, our findings highlight the crucial role of Sox18 in the development of the heart via inhibiting Wnt/β-Catenin signaling.
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| 5. |
- Zhao, Wenyan, et al.
(author)
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A CLOUD-BASED APPROACH TO SUPPORT THE MOBILE PHONE RECYCLING INDUSTRY IN CHINA
- 2016
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In: ASME 2016 11th International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference, MSEC 2016. - : American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In recent years, the waste mobile phones are generated in large quantity in China. Those e-wastes gain more and more attention because of both the sharp increase in quantity and the recyclable resources they contain. Furthermore, the mobile phone recycling industry has experienced a trend of rapid growth as well. However, due to the lack of national policies and legislations, the recycling industry is now facing problems in recycling processes. Thus in this paper, mobile phone recycling industry in China is systematically analyzed and a Cloud-based approach is developed which integrates tracking, interaction and coordinator mechanism through the recycling processes. With the integration of various stakeholders, the system can provide integrated data system throughout the whole life cycle of the mobile phones for the policy maker, and provide guidance for the operations during recycling service for the recycling stakeholders.
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| 6. |
- Berndt, Sonja I., et al.
(author)
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Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies 11 new loci for anthropometric traits and provides insights into genetic architecture
- 2013
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In: Nature Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1061-4036 .- 1546-1718. ; 45:5, s. 501-U69
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Approaches exploiting trait distribution extremes may be used to identify loci associated with common traits, but it is unknown whether these loci are generalizable to the broader population. In a genome-wide search for loci associated with the upper versus the lower 5th percentiles of body mass index, height and waist-to-hip ratio, as well as clinical classes of obesity, including up to 263,407 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 4 new loci (IGFBP4, H6PD, RSRC1 and PPP2R2A) influencing height detected in the distribution tails and 7 new loci (HNF4G, RPTOR, GNAT2, MRPS33P4, ADCY9, HS6ST3 and ZZZ3) for clinical classes of obesity. Further, we find a large overlap in genetic structure and the distribution of variants between traits based on extremes and the general population and little etiological heterogeneity between obesity subgroups.
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| 7. |
- Dai, Yi, et al.
(author)
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Zn-doped CaFeO3 perovskite-derived high performed catalyst on oxygen reduction reaction in microbial fuel cells
- 2021
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In: Journal of Power Sources. - : ELSEVIER. - 0378-7753 .- 1873-2755. ; 489
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Stable perovskite oxide is considered as a potential cathode for microbial fuel cells (MFCs). Herein, Zn is used as an effective element to modify the micro-structure and oxygen vacancy of perovskite to be a novel cathode catalyst. Physical characterizations show that due to partial volatilization at high temperature of Zn, perovskite forms hierarchically porous structures. Moreover, Zn is precipitated in electrochemical reaction to generate Zn vacancy in situ; thus, the active center of Fe has a superior interaction with oxygen-containing species, promoting the production of oxygen vacancy and forms a mixed valence state of Fe2+/Fe3+. The Zn-doped perovskite material CaFe0.7Zn0.3O3 exhibits remarkable oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) performances with outstanding onset potential (0.194 V vs. Ag/AgCl) and half-wave potential (-0.219 V vs. Ag/AgCl) under alkaline condition, which is better than Pt/C catalyst. Besides, CaFe0.7Zn0.3O3 shows an excellent four-electron pathway of ORR mechanism with remarkable corrosion resistance and stability, which enables a more reliable cathode electrocatalyst. The maximum power density of CaFe0.7Zn0.3O3 (892.10 +/- 90.79 mW m(-3)) testing on microbial fuel cell is comparable to the maximum power density (1012.86 +/- 84.03 mW m(-3)) of Pt/C. The findings of this work provide the feasibility of exploring inexpensive and high-performance cathode catalyst.
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| 8. |
- Gao, Yipeng, et al.
(author)
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Research on the Security of Visual Reasoning CAPTCHA
- 2021
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In: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 30TH USENIX SECURITY SYMPOSIUM. - : USENIX ASSOC. - 9781939133243 ; , s. 3291-3308
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- CAPTCHA is an effective mechanism for protecting computers from malicious bots. With the development of deep learning techniques, current mainstream text-based CAPTCHAs have been proven to be insecure. Therefore, a major effort has been directed toward developing image-based CAPTCHAs, and image-based visual reasoning is emerging as a new direction of such development. Recently, Tencent deployed the Visual Turing Test (VTT) CAPTCHA. This appears to have been the first application of a visual reasoning scheme. Subsequently, other CAPTCHA service providers (Geetest, NetEase, Dingxiang, etc.) have proposed their own visual reasoning schemes to defend against bots. It is, therefore, natural to ask a fundamental question: are visual reasoning CAPTCHAs as secure as their designers expect? This paper presents the first attempt to solve visual reasoning CAPTCHAs. We implemented a holistic attack and a modular attack, which achieved overall success rates of 67.3% and 88.0% on VTT CAPTCHA, respectively. The results show that visual reasoning CAPTCHAs are not as secure as anticipated; this latest effort to use novel, hard AI problems for CAPTCHAs has not yet succeeded. Based on the lessons we learned from our attacks, we also offer some guidelines for designing visual CAPTCHAs with better security.
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| 9. |
- Guo, Xuewen, et al.
(author)
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Novel small-molecule zwitterionic electrolyte with ultralow work function as cathode modifier for inverted polymer solar cells
- 2018
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In: Organic electronics. - : ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. - 1566-1199 .- 1878-5530. ; 59, s. 15-20
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Interfacial compatibility between the electrode and organic semiconductor plays a critical role in controlling the charge transport and hence efficiency of organic solar cell. Here, we introduce a novel small-molecule zwitterionic electrolyte (S1) combined with ZnO as electron transporting interlayer employed for the inverted PTB7:PC71BM bulk heterojunction solar cell. The resulting device with the S1/ZnO stacked interlayer achieves a high PCE of 8.59%, obtaining a 16.2% improvement over the control device performance of 7.4% without the S1 attributed to the significant increased short-circuit current density and fill factor. The interfacial properties are investigated. It is found that the S1/ZnO interlayer possess an ultralow work function of 3.6 eV, which originates from the interfacial double dipole step induced by the zwitterionic side chain electrostatic realignment at interface. The S1/ZnO interlayer exhibits the excellent charge extraction ability, suppresses the charge recombination loss and decreases the series resistance at the active layer/electrode contact.
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| 10. |
- Guo, Xuewen, et al.
(author)
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Understanding the effect of N2200 on performance of J71 : ITIC bulk heterojunction in ternary non-fullerene solar cells
- 2019
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In: Organic electronics. - : Elsevier. - 1566-1199 .- 1878-5530. ; 71, s. 65-71
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- None-fullerene solar cells with ternary architecture have attracted much attention because it is an effective approach for boosting the device power conversion efficiency. Here, the crystalline polymer N2200 as the third component is integrated into J71: ITIC bulk heterojunction. A series of characterizations indicate that N2200 could increase photo-harvesting, balanced hole and electron mobilities, enhanced exciton dissociation, and suppressed charge recombination, which result in the comprehensive improvement of open circuit voltage, short circuit current and fill factor in the device. Moreover, after introduction of N2200, the morphology of the ternary active layer is optimized, and the film crystallinity is improved. This work demonstrates that adding a small quantity of high crystallization acceptor into non-fullerene donor: acceptor mixture is a promising strategy toward developing high-performance organic solar cells.
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