ObjectiveTo investigate the regulatory mechanism of thioredoxin binding protein (TXNIP)/nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) pathway in the occurrence and development of breast cancer.MethodsThe resected 15 cases of breast cancer tissues and their adjacent tissues in our hospital from September 2019 to June 2020 were selected, and the immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression levels of TXNIP and NLRP3 in breast cancer and its adjacent tissues. Three kinds of breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB231, MCF-7 and SKBR3) and normal breast epithelial cell line (HMEC) were collected. Western blot was used to detect the relative expression levels of TXNIP and NLRP3 in three kinds of breast cancer cell lines and HMEC cell line. MDA-MB231 cancer cells were divided into blank control group (normal culture without any treatment), TXNIP overexpression group (Ad-TXNIP group, transfected with adenovirus vector carrying TXNIP overexpression sequence), Ad-TXNIP negative control group (Ad-eGFP1 group, transfected of empty adenovirus vector without TXNIP overexpression sequence), NLRP3 overexpression group (Ad-NLRP3 group, transfected with adenovirus vector containing NLRP3 overexpression sequence), TXNIP and NLRP3 overexpression co-transfection group (Ad-TXNIP+Ad-NLRP3 group, co-transfection of adenovirus vector carrying TXNIP and NLRP3 overexpression sequence), TXNIP overexpression and Ad-NLRP3 negative control (Ad-eGFP2) co-transfection group (Ad-TXNIP+Ad-eGFP2 group,co-transfection of adenovirus vector carrying TXNIP overexpression sequence and empty adenovirus without NLRP3 overexpression sequence). After 24 hours of transfection and culture, CCK-8 method was used to detect the MDA-MB231 cells proliferation. Transwell chamber method was used to detect MDA-MB231 cells migration and invasion. Nude mice tumorigenicity test was used to detect the tumorigenicity of the MDA-MB231 cells in vivo. Western blot was used to detect the expressions of TXNIP, NLRP3, proliferation marker protein (Ki-67), caspase-1, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-18 and caspase-1 precursor protein (pro-caspase-1) in the MDA-MB231 cells.ResultsCompared with the adjacent tissues, the relative expression level of TXNIP decreased (P<0.05) and the relative expression level of NLRP3 increased (P<0.05) in breast cancer tissues. Compared with normal breast epithelial cell line (HMEC cell line), the relative expression levels of TXNIP in MDA-MB231, MCF-7 and SKBR3 breast cancer cell lines were decreased (P<0.05), and the relative expression levels of NLRP3 were increased (P<0.05). Compared with the blank control group, the relative expression levels of TXNIP, NLRP3, IL-1β, IL-18, pro-caspase-1 and caspase-1 were increased (P<0.05), the relative expression levels of Ki-67 and VEGF, the proliferation activity, invasion and migration ability of MDA-MB231 cells and tumor weight were decreased (P<0.05) in the Ad-TXNIP group and the Ad-NLRP3 group. Compared with the Ad-TXNIP group and the Ad-NLRP3 group, the relative expression levels of TXNIP, NLRP3, IL-1β, IL-18, pro-caspase-1 and caspase-1 were further increased (P<0.05), the relative expression levels of Ki-67 and VEGF, the proliferation activity, invasion and migration ability of MDA-MB231 cells and tumor weight were further decreased (P<0.05) in the Ad-TXNIP+Ad-NLRP3 group.ConclusionsIn breast cancer tissues and breast cancer cell lines, TXNIP is low expression and NLRP3 is high expression. They can interact with each other to promote pyroptosis and inhibit the proliferation, invasion and migration of breast cancer cells.
Aiming at the problem that the small samples of critical disease in clinic may lead to prognostic models with poor performance of overfitting, large prediction error and instability, the long short-term memory transferring algorithm (transLSTM) was proposed. Based on the idea of transfer learning, the algorithm leverages the correlation between diseases to transfer information of different disease prognostic models, constructs the effictive model of target disease of small samples with the aid of large data of related diseases, hence improves the prediction performance and reduces the requirement for target training sample quantity. The transLSTM algorithm firstly uses the related disease samples to pretrain partial model parameters, and then further adjusts the whole network with the target training samples. The testing results on MIMIC-Ⅲ database showed that compared with traditional LSTM classification algorithm, the transLSTM algorithm had 0.02-0.07 higher AUROC and 0.05-0.14 larger AUPRC, while its number of training iterations was only 39%-64% of the traditional algorithm. The results of application on sepsis revealed that the transLSTM model of only 100 training samples had comparable mortality prediction performance to the traditional model of 250 training samples. In small sample situations, the transLSTM algorithm has significant advantages with higher prediciton accuracy and faster training speed. It realizes the application of transfer learning in the prognostic model of critical disease with small samples.
Objective To explore the effects of DNA cross-linking repair 1B (DCLRE1B) gene on the migration and invasion ability of hepatocellular carcinoma cell. Methods Bioinformatics analysis was used to analyze the expression of DCLRE1B mRNA in hepatocellular carcinoma, and its relationship with the prognosis and related influencing factors of patients. Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression of DCLRE1B protein in resected hepatocellular carcinoma tissues and their corresponding normal liver tissues. The DCLRE1B gene silenced Huh7 and HepG2 hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines were constructed by lentivirus, and the transfected effect was detected by Western blot. The migration and invasion of DCLRE1B silenced hepatocellular carcinoma cells were detected by scratch test and Transwell method. The changes of genes related to epithelial mesenchymal transformation (EMT) after DCLRE1B silencing were detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Results ① The biological information analysis results showed that: The mRNA expression of DCLRE1B was highly expressed in a variety of tumors including hepatocellular carcinoma (P<0.05). The mRNA expression of DCLRE1B was associated with the TNM staging of tumor (P<0.05). The relative expression level of DCLRE1B mRNA in hepatocellular carcinoma patients was related to their prognosis. The overall survival situation (P=0.038) and progression free survival situation (P=0.005) of hepatocellular carcinoma patients in the high expression group were worse than those in the low expression group. Univariate and multivariate Cox analysis showed that the expression of DCLRE1B gene was an independent factor affecting the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (P<0.05). ② The positive rate of DCLRE1B protein expression in resected hepatocellular carcinoma tissues was higher than that in normal liver tissues (P<0.05). ③ Cell experiment results showed that: After stable silencing DCLRE1B gene of hepatocellular carcinoma cell (Huh7 and HepG2) constructed by lentivirus, the expression of DCLRE1B protein was significantly down regulated (P<0.05). After silencing DCLRE1B gene, the migration and invasion ability of hepatocellular carcinoma cells were significantly decreased (P<0.05). After silencing DCLRE1B, the mRNA expressions of E-cadherin, matrix metalloproteinase 9, and β-catenin were up regulated (P<0.05), and the mRNA expressions of N-cadherin and Vimentin were down regulated (P<0.05), but the mRNA expression of zinc finger transcription factor had no significant change, and the difference was not statistically significant (P＞0.05). Conclusion Silencing DCLRE1B gene can inhibit the migration and invasion ability of hepatocellular carcinoma cells, and its mechanism may be related to the process of EMT.
Objective To study the effect on expression of high mobility group box-1 （HMGB1） mRNA for the expression of zonula occludens-1 （ZO-1） in ileum tissues， and to explore the possible mechanism of intestinal mucosal barrier injury in rats with acute necrotizing pancreatitis （ANP）. Methods Ninety-six male Wistar rats were divided randomly （random number method） into ANP group， ethyl pyruvate （EP）group， and sham operation group. Eight rats of 3 groups were killed to get abdominal aortic blood and ileal tissues at 6， 12， 24， and 48h after operation， respectively.The levels of plasma amylase （AMY） ， D-lactate acid， and the activity of malonyl dialdehyde （MDA） in the ileum tissues were determined by using automatic biochemical analyzer， improved enzymatic spectrophotometry， and thiobarbituric acid （TAB） colorimetry respectively. The pathological changes of ileum tissues were observed under microscopy by HE staining， the expression of ZO-1 protein in ileum tissues was observed by immunohistochemistry （SP method）， and the expressions of HMGB1 mRNA and ZO-1 mRNA in ileum tissues were detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction （RT-PCR）. Results Compared with ANP group at the same time， levels of AMY， D-lactate acid， and MDA in ileum tissues of EP group were all significantly lower （P＜0.05）. The expression level of HMGB1 mRNA increased at 6 h while ZO-1 mRNA decreased in ANP group. Compared with ANP group at the same time， the expression level of HMGB1 mRNA of EP group was significantly lower while ZO-1 mRNA was higher （P＜0.05）， and the pathological damage in ileum tissues was lighter. Conclusions The decreased expression of ZO-1 in ileum tissues is one of the vitalcauses for intestinal mucosal barrier injury in ANP， and it probably occurs in case of the excessive expression of HMGB1.
Objective To investigate the effect of keratin 17 (K-17) on the migration, prol iferation and tube formation of human umbil ical vein endothel ial cell (HUVEC), and to real ize the role of K-17 in angiogenesis. Methods After HUVEC were cultured in DMEM medium supplemented with 10%FBS overnight, K-17-siRNA-mixture (experimental group) and Ncontrol-siRNA-mixture (negative control group) were added into HUVEC, respectively, by Lipofectamine 2000 transfection assay, and the final concentration of the siRNA was 50 nmol/L. Lipofectamine 2000 alone was used as the control. After the cells were cultured for 36 hours, the cell prol iferation abil ity was detected by cell counting. After 30-hour culture, the cell’s abil ities of migration and differentiation to tube were detected by 24-well Mill icell units and the collagen gel assay, respectively. In addition, non-siRNA-treated HUVEC were cultured for 24 hours in DMEM medium supplemented with 10%FBS (group A), 2%FBS (group B) and 2%FBS+10 ng/mL bFGF (group C), respectively, and then the expression of K-17 in HUVEC was detected by RT-PCR and Western blot. Results After the treatment with K-17-siRNA for 36 hours, HUVEC exhibited no significant difference in the prol iferation, compared with both control and negative control groups (P gt; 0.05). After transfected with K-17-siRNA for 30 hours, the number of HUVEC in the experimental group which migrated from the upper chamber to the lower chamber of Mill icell wells within 24 hours (3719.0 ± 319.0) was smaller than both control (7 437.5 ± 212.0) and negative control (7 356.3 ± 795.7) groups, with significant difference (P lt; 0.01). However, there was no significant difference between the control group and the negative control group (P gt; 0.05). After HUVEC were transfected with K-17- siRNA for 30 hours, the number of tubes in the experimental group, the negative control group and the control group in 24 hours was (1.1 ± 0.5), (3.6 ± 0.5) and (3.2 ± 0.6) per field, respectively. The experimental group was significantly different from both control and negative control groups (P lt; 0.01), and there was no significant difference between the negative control group and the control group (P gt; 0.05). The expression of K-17 protein in HUVEC in groups A, B and C was 0.25 ± 0.02, 0.08 ± 0.01 and 0.72 ± 0.03, respectively. There was significant difference among these three groups (P lt; 0.01). Conclusion K-17 has no impact on cell prol iferation, but may augment endothel ial cell migration, which may facil itate angiogenesis.
In the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), traditional subject-specific decoding methods suffer from the limitations of long calibration time and low cross-subject generalizability, which restricts the promotion and application of BCI systems in daily life and clinic. To address the above dilemma, this study proposes a novel deep transfer learning approach that combines the revised inception-residual network (rIRN) model and the model-based transfer learning (TL) strategy, referred to as TL-rIRN. This study performed cross-subject recognition experiments on mental arithmetic (MA) and mental singing (MS) tasks to validate the effectiveness and superiority of the TL-rIRN approach. The results show that the TL-rIRN significantly shortens the calibration time, reduces the training time of the target model and the consumption of computational resources, and dramatically enhances the cross-subject decoding performance compared to subject-specific decoding methods and other deep transfer learning methods. To sum up, this study provides a basis for the selection of cross-subject, cross-task, and real-time decoding algorithms for fNIRS-BCI systems, which has potential applications in constructing a convenient and universal BCI system.
ObjectiveTo investigate the influence of heat shock protein A2 (HSPA2) on the biological behavior of pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells and its mechanism. MethodsThe expressions of HSPA2 were determined in the human pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell lines (PANC-1, BxPC-3, and AsPC-1) using the Western blot. Subsequently, the cells with the lowest and highest HSPA2 expressions among these three lines were selected for conducting overexpression and knockdown experiments targeting HSPA2, respectively. The cellular proliferation, cell clonogenesis, migration, and invasion capabilities were assessed using MTT, clonogenic assay, and Transwell assay, respectively. Additionally, the impact of HSPA2 on the expression of key markers of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) was examined using the Western blot. The potential target molecules of HSPA2 were identified through immunoprecipitation assay and mass spectrometry. The rescue experiments further explored the regulatory relation between the HSPA2 and its target molecules. The influence of HSPA2 on pancreatic adenocarcinoma growth was investigated through establishment of xenograft tumor model in nude mice. ResultsThe HSPA2 exhibited the lowest expression in the PANC-1 cells and the highest expression in the AsPC-1 cells among the three cell lines. Subsequent functional studies demonstrated that the overexpression of HSPA2 in the PANC-1 cells markedly promoted proliferation, cell clonogenesis, migration, and invasion, while the knockdown of HSPA2 expression in the AsPC-1 cells markedly inhibited these processes. The Western blot analysis further showed that the HSPA2 overexpression downregulated E-cadherin expression and upregulated N-cadherin and Vimentin expressiones, whereas the HSPA2 knockdown produced opposite effects. The rescue experiments indicated that the HSPA2 promoted the EMT in pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells by upregulating Yes associated protein (YAP). The subcutaneous xenograft tumor experiments in the nude mice showed that the HSPA2 knockdown inhibited tumor growth. ConclusionThe results of this study suggest that HSPA2 promotes EMT via upregulating YAP, which facilitates proliferation, migration, and invasion of pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells.
ObjectiveTo investigate the effects of thrombospondin-1 active fragment (TSP-1) synthetical peptide VR-10 on proliferation and migration of rhesus choroidal-retinal endothelial (RF/6A) cell and the expressions of apoptosis relative genes in RF/6A cell. MethodsThe survival rate of RF/6A cell were detected by methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium, and migration ability was measured by transwell chamber after exposure to 1.0 μg/ml TSP-1 and synthetic peptide VR-10 (0.1, 1.0, 10.0 μg/ml) for different times (6, 12, 24, 48 hours). Caspase-3 and factor associated suicide (FAS) protein levels were measured by Western blot. The mRNA level of bcl-2 and FAS ligand (FASL) were measured by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). ResultsThe survival rate of RF/6A cells was determined by the treatment time and concentration of TSP-1(1.0 μg/ml) and the synthetic peptide VR-10 (0.1, 1.0, 10.0 μg/ml). The lowest survival ratio of RF/6A was 78% (P < 0.001) when cells were treated by 10 μg/ml synthetic peptide VR-10 after 48 hours. TSP-1 and synthetic peptide VR-10 could inhibit migration of RF/6A cells in transwell chamber (P < 0.001). 10.0 μg/ml synthetic peptide VR-10 had the strongest effect, 1.0 μg/ml TSP-1 was the next. Migration inhibition rate was increase with the increase of the concentration of VR-10 (P < 0.001). There was no significant differences between 0.1 μg/ml and 1.0 μg/ml VR-10 (P=0.114). Western bolt showed that RF/6A cell in control group mainly expressed the 32×103 procaspase-3 forms. To 10.0 μg/ml VR-10 treated group, it showed decreased expression of procaspase-3 (32×103) and concomitant increased expression of its shorter proapoptotic forms (20×103). Compared with control group, expression of FAS peptides were significantly increased in 10.0 μg/ml VR-10 treated group. Compared with control group, expression of FasL mRNA was significantly increased in 10.0 μg/ml VR-10 treated group(t=39.365, P=0.001), but the expression of bcl-2 mRNA was decreased(t=-67.419, P=0.000). ConclusionTSP-1 and synthetic peptide VR-10 had the ability to inhibit proliferation and migration of endothelial cell, and also induce apoptosis by increasing FAS/FASL expression and repressing bcl-2 expression.
ObjectiveTo investigate the effects of pipecolic acid oxidase (PIPOX) on the proliferation, apoptosis, migration and invasion of primary liver cancer cells. MethodsImmunohistochemical staining and analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database were used to examine the PIPOX expression levels in liver cancer tissues and paired adjacent normal tissues, and studied their relationship with patient prognosis. Liver cancer cell lines stably overexpressing or knocking out PIPOX were constructed to explore PIPOX’s impact on liver cancer cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration and invasion by conducting in vitro functional experiments such as CCK-8, EdU, apoptosis detection, and Transwell assays. In vivo, nude mice subcutaneous tumor models and lung metastasis models were used to verify PIPOX’s effect on liver cancer growth and metastasis. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and western blot were both employed to detect the expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers in liver cancer cells. ResultsImmunohistochemical staining and TCGA database analysis revealed that PIPOX expression was significantly lower in liver cancer tissues compared to paired adjacent normal tissues (P<0.05). Prognostic analysis indicated shorter overall survival and disease-free survival in PIPOX low expression group (P<0.05). In vitro gain- and loss-of-function experiments showed that PIPOX significantly inhibited liver cancer cell migration and invasion (P<0.05), while having no significant effects on their proliferation and apoptosis (P>0.05). Animal experiments also confirmed that PIPOX significantly inhibited liver cancer lung metastasis (P<0.05), but had no significant effects on tumor growth (P>0.05). Finally, RT-qPCR and western blot results revealed that PIPOX promoted the expression of the epithelial marker E-cadherin (P<0.05) and inhibited the expression of mesenchymal markers (N-cadherin, vimentin, Snail) (P<0.05). ConclusionsPIPOX significantly inhibits liver cancer cell migration and invasion, potentially via suppressing the EMT process. However, PIPOX does not significantly affect liver cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis.