Neuronal activity,synaptic transmission,and molecular changes in the basolateral amygdala play critical roles in fear memory.Cylindromatosis(CYLD)is a deubiquitinase that negatively regulates the nuclear factor kappa-...Neuronal activity,synaptic transmission,and molecular changes in the basolateral amygdala play critical roles in fear memory.Cylindromatosis(CYLD)is a deubiquitinase that negatively regulates the nuclear factor kappa-B pathway.CYLD is well studied in non-neuronal cells,yet underinvestigated in the brain,where it is highly expressed.Emerging studies have shown involvement of CYLD in the remodeling of glutamatergic synapses,neuroinflammation,fear memory,and anxiety-and autism-like behaviors.However,the precise role of CYLD in glutamatergic neurons is largely unknown.Here,we first proposed involvement of CYLD in cued fear expression.We next constructed transgenic model mice with specific deletion of Cyld from glutamatergic neurons.Our results show that glutamatergic CYLD deficiency exaggerated the expression of cued fear in only male mice.Further,loss of CYLD in glutamatergic neurons resulted in enhanced neuronal activation,impaired excitatory synaptic transmission,and altered levels of glutamate receptors accompanied by over-activation of microglia in the basolateral amygdala of male mice.Altogether,our study suggests a critical role of glutamatergic CYLD in maintaining normal neuronal,synaptic,and microglial activation.This may contribute,at least in part,to cued fear expression.展开更多
Objective INF2 is a member of the formins family.Abnormal expression and regulation of INF2 have been associated with the progression of various tumors,but the expression and role of INF2 in hepatocellular carcinoma(H...Objective INF2 is a member of the formins family.Abnormal expression and regulation of INF2 have been associated with the progression of various tumors,but the expression and role of INF2 in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)remain unclear.HCC is a highly lethal malignant tumor.Given the limitations of traditional treatments,this study explored the expression level,clinical value and potential mechanism of INF2 in HCC in order to seek new therapeutic targets.Methods In this study,we used public databases to analyze the expression of INF2 in pan-cancer and HCC,as well as the impact of INF2 expression levels on HCC prognosis.Quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction(RT-qPCR),Western blot,and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the expression level of INF2 in liver cancer cells and human HCC tissues.The correlation between INF2 expression and clinical pathological features was analyzed using public databases and clinical data of human HCC samples.Subsequently,the effects of INF2 expression on the biological function and Drp1 phosphorylation of liver cancer cells were elucidated through in vitro and in vivo experiments.Finally,the predictive value and potential mechanism of INF2 in HCC were further analyzed through database and immunohistochemical experiments.Results INF2 is aberrantly high expression in HCC samples and the high expression of INF2 is correlated with overall survival,liver cirrhosis and pathological differentiation of HCC patients.The expression level of INF2 has certain diagnostic value in predicting the prognosis and pathological differentiation of HCC.In vivo and in vitro HCC models,upregulated expression of INF2 triggers the proliferation and migration of the HCC cell,while knockdown of INF2 could counteract this effect.INF2 in liver cancer cells may affect mitochondrial division by inducing Drp1 phosphorylation and mediate immune escape by up-regulating PD-L1 expression,thus promoting tumor progression.Conclusion INF2 is highly expressed in HCC and is associated with poor prognosis.High expression of INF2 may promote HCC progression by inducing Drp1 phosphorylation and up-regulation of PD-L1 expression,and targeting INF2 may be beneficial for HCC patients with high expression of INF2.展开更多
Commercial cultivars of garlic,a popular condiment,are sterile,making genetic variation and germplasm innovation of this plant challenging.Understanding mechanism of gamete sterility in garlic and their key regulatory...Commercial cultivars of garlic,a popular condiment,are sterile,making genetic variation and germplasm innovation of this plant challenging.Understanding mechanism of gamete sterility in garlic and their key regulatory networks is therefore important for fertility restoration.In this work,we conducted a detailed phenotypic analysis of fertile and sterile garlic genotypes and found that enlargement of topset in the inflorescence of sterile genotypes led to abnormal flowers.Additional cytological observations showed that aberrant meiotic cytokinesis in sterile garlic ultimately resulted in pollen degeneration.Transcriptomics analysis of sterile and fertile genotypes identified possible molecular mechanisms underlying gamete abortion.A total of 100710 differentially expressed genes(DEGs)between the fertile and sterile garlic flowers at three stages of gamete development were identified,many of which were involved in homologous chromosome synapsis during meiosis,MYB transcription factor regulation,ribosome biogenesis and plant hormone signal transduction.Taken together,these results provide insight into the molecular mechanisms and regulatory networks underlying gamete development in garlic and point to a set of candidate genes for further functional characterization.展开更多
Hypertension(HT)is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.Krüppel-like factors(KLFs)are important transcription factors in eukaryotes.Studies have reported that KLF4 and KLF5 are correlated with several ...Hypertension(HT)is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.Krüppel-like factors(KLFs)are important transcription factors in eukaryotes.Studies have reported that KLF4 and KLF5 are correlated with several cardiovascular diseases,but population-based studies on associations between HT and KLF4 or KLF5 have rarely been reported.Therefore,the current study investigated the associations of genetic variants and m RNA expression levels of KLF4 and KLF5 with HT,as well as the effects of antihypertensive drugs on the expression levels of these genes.The associations of one single-nucleotide polymorphism(SNP)in KLF4 and three SNPs in KLF5with HT were analyzed using a combination of case-control and cohort studies.The study populations were selected from a community-based cohort in four regions of Jiangsu province.The risks of HT were estimated through logistic and Cox regression analyses.In addition,m RNA expression levels of KLF4 and KLF5 were detected in 246 controls and 385 HT cases selected from the aforementioned cohort.Among the HT cases,263were not taking antihypertensive drugs[AHD(-)]and 122 were taking antihypertensive drugs[AHD(+)].In the case-control study,SNP rs9573096(C>T)in KLF5 was significantly associated with an increased risk of HT in the additive model(adjusted odds ratio[OR],1.106;95%confidence interval[CI],1.009 to 1.212).In the cohort study of the normotensive population,rs9573096 in KLF5 was also significantly associated with an increased risk of HT in the additive model(adjusted hazards ratio[HR],1.199;95%CI,1.070 to 1.344).KLF4 and KLF5m RNA expression levels were significantly higher in the AHD(-)group than in the control group(P<0.05),but lower in the AHD(+)group than in the AHD(-)group(P<0.05).The current study demonstrated the associations of KLF4 and KLF5 genetic variants with hypertension,as well as the association of the indicative variations in m RNA expression levels of KLF4 and KLF5 with the risk of hypertension and antihypertensive treatment.展开更多
Artificial intelligence,such as deep learning technology,has advanced the study of facial expression recognition since facial expression carries rich emotional information and is significant for many naturalistic situ...Artificial intelligence,such as deep learning technology,has advanced the study of facial expression recognition since facial expression carries rich emotional information and is significant for many naturalistic situations.To pursue a high facial expression recognition accuracy,the network model of deep learning is generally designed to be very deep while the model’s real-time performance is typically constrained and limited.With MobileNetV3,a lightweight model with a good accuracy,a further study is conducted by adding a basic ResNet module to each of its existing modules and an SSH(Single Stage Headless Face Detector)context module to expand the model’s perceptual field.In this article,the enhanced model named Res-MobileNetV3,could alleviate the subpar of real-time performance and compress the size of large network models,which can process information at a rate of up to 33 frames per second.Although the improved model has been verified to be slightly inferior to the current state-of-the-art method in aspect of accuracy rate on the publically available face expression datasets,it can bring a good balance on accuracy,real-time performance,model size and model complexity in practical applications.展开更多
DNA microarray technology is an extremely effective technique for studying gene expression patterns in cells, and the main challenge currently faced by this technology is how to analyze the large amount of gene expres...DNA microarray technology is an extremely effective technique for studying gene expression patterns in cells, and the main challenge currently faced by this technology is how to analyze the large amount of gene expression data generated. To address this, this paper employs a mixed-effects model to analyze gene expression data. In terms of data selection, 1176 genes from the white mouse gene expression dataset under two experimental conditions were chosen, setting up two conditions: pneumococcal infection and no infection, and constructing a mixed-effects model. After preprocessing the gene chip information, the data were imported into the model, preliminary results were calculated, and permutation tests were performed to biologically validate the preliminary results using GSEA. The final dataset consists of 20 groups of gene expression data from pneumococcal infection, which categorizes functionally related genes based on the similarity of their expression profiles, facilitating the study of genes with unknown functions.展开更多
Excessive abdominal fat deposition seriously restricts the production efficiency of broilers.Several studies found that dietary supplemental manganese(Mn)could effectively reduce the abdominal fat deposition of broile...Excessive abdominal fat deposition seriously restricts the production efficiency of broilers.Several studies found that dietary supplemental manganese(Mn)could effectively reduce the abdominal fat deposition of broilers,but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear.The present study aimed to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation with the inorganic or organic Mn on abdominal fat deposition,and enzyme activity and gene expression involved in lipid metabolism in the abdominal fat of male or female broilers.A total of 4201-d-old AA broilers(half males and half females)were randomly allotted by body weight and gender to 1 of 6 treatments with 10 replicates cages of 7 chicks per cage in a completely randomized design involving a 3(dietary Mn addition)×2(gender)factorial arrangement.Male or female broilers were fed with the Mn-unsupplemented basal diets containing 17.52 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 1-21)and 15.62 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 22-42)by analysis or the basal diets supplemented with 110 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 1-21)and 80 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 22-42)as either the Mn sulfate or the Mn proteinate with moderate chelation strength(Mn-Prot M)for 42 d.The results showed that the interaction between dietary Mn addition and gender had no impact(P>0.05)on any of the measured parameters;abdominal fat percentage of broilers was decreased(P<0.003)by Mn addition;Mn addition increased(P<0.004)adipose triglyceride lipase(ATGL)activity,while Mn-Prot M decreased(P<0.002)the fatty acid synthase(FAS)activity in the abdominal fat of broilers compared to the control;Mn addition decreased(P<0.009)diacylglycerol acyltransferase 2(DGAT2)mRNA expression level and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ(PPARγ)mRNA and protein expression levels,but up-regulated(P<0.05)the ATGL mRNA and protein expression levels in the abdominal fat of broilers.It was concluded that dietary supplementation with Mn inhibited the abdominal fat deposition of broilers possibly via decreasing the expression of PPARγand DGAT2 as well as increasing the expression and activity of ATGL in the abdominal fat of broilers,and Mn-Prot M was more effective in inhibiting the FAS acitivity.展开更多
Vascular etiology is the second most prevalent cause of cognitive impairment globally.Endothelin-1,which is produced and secreted by endothelial cells and astrocytes,is implicated in the pathogenesis of stroke.However...Vascular etiology is the second most prevalent cause of cognitive impairment globally.Endothelin-1,which is produced and secreted by endothelial cells and astrocytes,is implicated in the pathogenesis of stroke.However,the way in which changes in astrocytic endothelin-1 lead to poststroke cognitive deficits following transient middle cerebral artery occlusion is not well understood.Here,using mice in which astrocytic endothelin-1 was overexpressed,we found that the selective overexpression of endothelin-1 by astrocytic cells led to ischemic stroke-related dementia(1 hour of ischemia;7 days,28 days,or 3 months of reperfusion).We also revealed that astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression contributed to the role of neural stem cell proliferation but impaired neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus after middle cerebral artery occlusion.Comprehensive proteome profiles and western blot analysis confirmed that levels of glial fibrillary acidic protein and peroxiredoxin 6,which were differentially expressed in the brain,were significantly increased in mice with astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression in comparison with wild-type mice 28 days after ischemic stroke.Moreover,the levels of the enriched differentially expressed proteins were closely related to lipid metabolism,as indicated by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis.Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry nontargeted metabolite profiling of brain tissues showed that astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression altered lipid metabolism products such as glycerol phosphatidylcholine,sphingomyelin,and phosphatidic acid.Overall,this study demonstrates that astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression can impair hippocampal neurogenesis and that it is correlated with lipid metabolism in poststroke cognitive dysfunction.展开更多
Heat shock transcription factors(Hsfs)have important roles during plant growth and development and responses to abiotic stresses.The identification and func-tion of Hsf genes have been thoroughly studied in various he...Heat shock transcription factors(Hsfs)have important roles during plant growth and development and responses to abiotic stresses.The identification and func-tion of Hsf genes have been thoroughly studied in various herbaceous plant species,but not woody species,especially Phoebe bournei,an endangered,unique species in China.In this study,17 members of the Hsf gene family were identi-fied from P.bournei using bioinformatic methods.Phyloge-netic analysis indicated that PbHsf genes were grouped into three subfamilies:A,B,and C.Conserved motifs,three-dimensional structure,and physicochemical properties of the PbHsf proteins were also analyzed.The structure of the PbHsf genes varied in the number of exons and introns.Pre-diction of cis-acting elements in the promoter region indi-cated that PbHsf genes are likely involved in responses to plant hormones and stresses.A collinearity analysis dem-onstrated that expansions of the PbHsf gene family mainly take place via segmental duplication.The expression levels of PbHsf genes varied across different plant tissues.On the basis of the expression profiles of five representative PbHsf genes during heat,cold,salt,and drought stress,PbHsf pro-teins seem to have multiple functions depending on the type of abiotic stress.This systematic,genome-wide investigation of PbHsf genes in P.bournei and their expression patterns provides valuable insights and information for further func-tional dissection of Hsf proteins in this endangered,unique species.展开更多
Background Milk synthesis in lactating animals demands high energy metabolism,which results in an increased production of reactive oxygen metabolites(ROM)causing an imbalance between oxidants and antioxidants thereby ...Background Milk synthesis in lactating animals demands high energy metabolism,which results in an increased production of reactive oxygen metabolites(ROM)causing an imbalance between oxidants and antioxidants thereby inducing oxidative stress(OS)on the animals.To mitigate OS and postpartum disorders in dairy goats and gain insight into the impact of dietary choices on redox status during lactation,a feeding trial was conducted using alfalfa silage inoculated with a high-antioxidant strain of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum.Methods Twenty-four Guanzhong dairy goats(38.1±1.20 kg)were randomly assigned to two dietary treatments:one containing silage inoculated with L.plantarum MTD/1(RSMTD-1),and the other containing silage inoculated with high antioxidant activity L.plantarum 24-7(ES24-7).Results ES24-7-inoculated silage exhibited better fermentation quality and antioxidant activity compared to RSMTD-1.The ES24-7 diet elevated the total antioxidant capacity(T-AOC),superoxide dismutase(SOD),glutathione peroxi-dase(GSH-Px),and catalase(CAT)activities in milk,serum,and feces of lactating goats(with the exception of T-AOC in milk).Additionally,the diet containing ES24-7 inoculated silage enhanced casein yield,milk free fatty acid(FFA)content,and vitamin A level in the goats’milk.Furthermore,an increase of immunoglobulin(Ig)A,IgG,IgM,inter-leukin(IL)-4,and IL-10 concentrations were observed,coupled with a reduction in IL-1β,IL-2,IL-6,interferon(IFN)-γ,and tumor necrosis factor(TNF)-αconcentrations in the serum of lactating goats fed ES24-7.Higher concentrations of total volatile fatty acid(VFA),acetate,and propionate were observed in the rumen fluid of dairy goats fed ES24-7 inoculated silage.Moreover,the diet containing ES24-7 inoculated silage significantly upregulated the expression of nuclear factor erythroid 2 like 2(NFE2L2),beta-carotene oxygenase 1(BCO1),SOD1,SOD2,SOD3,GPX2,CAT,glu-tathione-disulfide reductase(GSR),and heme oxygenase 1(HMOX1)genes in the mammary gland,while decreased the levels of NADPH oxidase 4(NOX4),TNF,and interferon gamma(IFNG).Conclusions These findings indicated that feeding L.plantarum 24-7 inoculated alfalfa silage not only improved rumen fermentation and milk quality in lactating dairy goats but also boosted their immunity and antioxidant status by modulating the expression of several genes related to antioxidant and inflammation in the mammary gland.展开更多
Pyraclostrobin(PYR),a widely used fungicide,has negative effects on fish and algae,but its toxicity in protozoa remains unclear.In this study,the effects of PYR on the growth,oxidative stress,and gene expression relat...Pyraclostrobin(PYR),a widely used fungicide,has negative effects on fish and algae,but its toxicity in protozoa remains unclear.In this study,the effects of PYR on the growth,oxidative stress,and gene expression related to stress and ATP-binding cassette(ABC)transporters in Tetrahymena thermophila were investigated.The result showed that the 96-h IC_(50)of PYR against T.thermophila was 17.2 mg/L.Moreover,PYR inhibited the growth of T.thermophila in concentration-or time-dependent manner.A morphological study revealed that the shape and size of T.thermophila changed,and damage of cell membrane surface was observed by scanning electron microscopy after 96 h of PYR exposure.The activities of superoxide dismutase(SOD)and catalase(CAT)increased throughout the experiment.In contrast,the glutathione(GSH)content was increased at 24 h and 48 h of exposure and decreased at 96 h.Moreover,a significant increase in malondialdehyde(MDA)level was observed in T.thermophila after96 h of exposure.Furthermore,PYR upregulated the HSP703,HSP705,GPx2,and ABAC15 gene expression in the 0.1–5-mg/L groups and downregulated the HSP704,HSP90,TGR,and ABCC52 mRNA levels at 96 h of exposure.These results suggest that PYR may exert adverse effects on T.thermophila by inducing oxidative stress and changing the gene expression related to ABC transporters and stress,which may enrich the understanding of the toxicity mechanism of PYR in aquatic organisms and provide reference data for aquatic ecological risk assessments.展开更多
Mucin family members play an indispensable role in immunity against pathogen invasion.Currently,there are very few studies on members of the mucin family in Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus.In this regard,we c...Mucin family members play an indispensable role in immunity against pathogen invasion.Currently,there are very few studies on members of the mucin family in Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus.In this regard,we characterized the mucin members in Japanese flounder as well as their involvement in response to pathogen infection.In our results,a total of 9 mucin genes were identified based on the whole genome database of flounder.Among them,MUC2-1,MUC2-2,MUC5AC-1,MUC5AC-2 and MUC5B are secreted mucins,while MUC3A,MUC3B,MUC13 and MUC15 are membrane binding mucins.The collinearity results showed that the adjacent MUC genes of flounder had collinearity relationship with many other teleosts.Phylogenetic tree results showed that the mucin gene of flounder was divided into several subfamilies.In addition,the expression patterns of flounder mucin family members were examined in 11 healthy tissues.The expression changes of mucin gene were also detected in six immune tissues(gill,intestine,skin,liver,kidney,spleen)after pathogen infection,revealing their role in disease resistance.Collinear analysis indicates the adjacent mucin genes.According to the protein interaction network(PPI)results,the mucin genes interact with the galnt genes.The results provide a solid foundation for further research on the function of mucins in mucosal immunity of flounder.展开更多
AIM:To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the influence of hypoxia and alpha-ketoglutaric acid(α-KG)on scleral collagen expression.METHODS:Meta-analysis and clinical statistics were used to prove the cha...AIM:To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the influence of hypoxia and alpha-ketoglutaric acid(α-KG)on scleral collagen expression.METHODS:Meta-analysis and clinical statistics were used to prove the changes in choroidal thickness(ChT)during myopia.The establishment of a hypoxic myopia model(HYP)for rabbit scleral fibroblasts through hypoxic culture and the effects of hypoxia andα-KG on collagen expression were demonstrated by Sirius red staining.Transcriptome analysis was used to verify the genes and pathways that hypoxia andα-KG affect collagen expression.Finally,real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction(RT-qPCR)was used for reverse verification.RESULTS:Meta-analysis results aligned with clinical statistics,revealing a thinning of ChT,leading to scleral hypoxia.Sirius red staining indicated lower collagen expression in the HYP group and higher collagen expression in the HYP+α-KG group,showed that hypoxia reduced collagen expression in scleral fibroblasts,whileα-KG can elevated collagen expression under HYP conditions.Transcriptome analysis unveiled the related genes and signaling pathways of hypoxia andα-KG affect scleral collagen expression and the results were verified by RT-qPCR.CONCLUSION:The potential molecular mechanisms through which hypoxia andα-KG influencing myopia is unraveled and three novel genes TLCD4,TBC1D4,and EPHX3 are identified.These findings provide a new perspective on the prevention and treatment of myopia via regulating collagen expression.展开更多
The effectiveness of facial expression recognition(FER)algorithms hinges on the model’s quality and the availability of a substantial amount of labeled expression data.However,labeling large datasets demands signific...The effectiveness of facial expression recognition(FER)algorithms hinges on the model’s quality and the availability of a substantial amount of labeled expression data.However,labeling large datasets demands significant human,time,and financial resources.Although active learning methods have mitigated the dependency on extensive labeled data,a cold-start problem persists in small to medium-sized expression recognition datasets.This issue arises because the initial labeled data often fails to represent the full spectrum of facial expression characteristics.This paper introduces an active learning approach that integrates uncertainty estimation,aiming to improve the precision of facial expression recognition regardless of dataset scale variations.The method is divided into two primary phases.First,the model undergoes self-supervised pre-training using contrastive learning and uncertainty estimation to bolster its feature extraction capabilities.Second,the model is fine-tuned using the prior knowledge obtained from the pre-training phase to significantly improve recognition accuracy.In the pretraining phase,the model employs contrastive learning to extract fundamental feature representations from the complete unlabeled dataset.These features are then weighted through a self-attention mechanism with rank regularization.Subsequently,data from the low-weighted set is relabeled to further refine the model’s feature extraction ability.The pre-trained model is then utilized in active learning to select and label information-rich samples more efficiently.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing approaches,achieving an improvement in recognition accuracy of 5.09%and 3.82%over the best existing active learning methods,Margin,and Least Confidence methods,respectively,and a 1.61%improvement compared to the conventional segmented active learning method.展开更多
Background Photosystem II(PSII)constitutes an intricate assembly of protein pigments,featuring extrinsic and intrinsic polypeptides within the photosynthetic membrane.The low-molecular-weight transmembrane protein Psb...Background Photosystem II(PSII)constitutes an intricate assembly of protein pigments,featuring extrinsic and intrinsic polypeptides within the photosynthetic membrane.The low-molecular-weight transmembrane protein PsbX has been identified in PSII,which is associated with the oxygen-evolving complex.The expression of PsbX gene protein is regulated by light.PsbX’s central role involves the regulation of PSII,facilitating the binding of quinone molecules to the Qb(PsbA)site,and it additionally plays a crucial role in optimizing the efficiency of photosynthesis.Despite these insights,a comprehensive understanding of the PsbX gene’s functions has remained elusive.Results In this study,we identified ten PsbX genes in Gossypium hirsutum L.The phylogenetic analysis results showed that 40 genes from nine species were classified into one clade.The resulting sequence logos exhibited substantial conservation across the N and C terminals at multiple sites among all Gossypium species.Furthermore,the ortholo-gous/paralogous,Ka/Ks ratio revealed that cotton PsbX genes subjected to positive as well as purifying selection pressure might lead to limited divergence,which resulted in the whole genome and segmental duplication.The expression patterns of GhPsbX genes exhibited variations across specific tissues,as indicated by the analysis.Moreover,the expression of GhPsbX genes could potentially be regulated in response to salt,intense light,and drought stresses.Therefore,GhPsbX genes may play a significant role in the modulation of photosynthesis under adverse abiotic conditions.Conclusion We examined the structure and function of PsbX gene family very first by using comparative genom-ics and systems biology approaches in cotton.It seems that PsbX gene family plays a vital role during the growth and development of cotton under stress conditions.Collectively,the results of this study provide basic information to unveil the molecular and physiological function of PsbX genes of cotton plants.展开更多
The estimation of pain intensity is critical for medical diagnosis and treatment of patients.With the development of image monitoring technology and artificial intelligence,automatic pain assessment based on facial ex...The estimation of pain intensity is critical for medical diagnosis and treatment of patients.With the development of image monitoring technology and artificial intelligence,automatic pain assessment based on facial expression and behavioral analysis shows a potential value in clinical applications.This paper reports a framework of convolutional neural network with global and local attention mechanism(GLA-CNN)for the effective detection of pain intensity at four-level thresholds using facial expression images.GLA-CNN includes two modules,namely global attention network(GANet)and local attention network(LANet).LANet is responsible for extracting representative local patch features of faces,while GANet extracts whole facial features to compensate for the ignored correlative features between patches.In the end,the global correlational and local subtle features are fused for the final estimation of pain intensity.Experiments under the UNBC-McMaster Shoulder Pain database demonstrate that GLA-CNN outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.Additionally,a visualization analysis is conducted to present the feature map of GLA-CNN,intuitively showing that it can extract not only local pain features but also global correlative facial ones.Our study demonstrates that pain assessment based on facial expression is a non-invasive and feasible method,and can be employed as an auxiliary pain assessment tool in clinical practice.展开更多
In smart classrooms, conducting multi-face expression recognition based on existing hardware devices to assessstudents’ group emotions can provide educators with more comprehensive and intuitive classroom effect anal...In smart classrooms, conducting multi-face expression recognition based on existing hardware devices to assessstudents’ group emotions can provide educators with more comprehensive and intuitive classroom effect analysis,thereby continuouslypromotingthe improvementof teaching quality.However,most existingmulti-face expressionrecognition methods adopt a multi-stage approach, with an overall complex process, poor real-time performance,and insufficient generalization ability. In addition, the existing facial expression datasets are mostly single faceimages, which are of low quality and lack specificity, also restricting the development of this research. This paperaims to propose an end-to-end high-performance multi-face expression recognition algorithm model suitable forsmart classrooms, construct a high-quality multi-face expression dataset to support algorithm research, and applythe model to group emotion assessment to expand its application value. To this end, we propose an end-to-endmulti-face expression recognition algorithm model for smart classrooms (E2E-MFERC). In order to provide highqualityand highly targeted data support for model research, we constructed a multi-face expression dataset inreal classrooms (MFED), containing 2,385 images and a total of 18,712 expression labels, collected from smartclassrooms. In constructing E2E-MFERC, by introducing Re-parameterization visual geometry group (RepVGG)block and symmetric positive definite convolution (SPD-Conv) modules to enhance representational capability;combined with the cross stage partial network fusion module optimized by attention mechanism (C2f_Attention),it strengthens the ability to extract key information;adopts asymptotic feature pyramid network (AFPN) featurefusion tailored to classroomscenes and optimizes the head prediction output size;achieves high-performance endto-end multi-face expression detection. Finally, we apply the model to smart classroom group emotion assessmentand provide design references for classroom effect analysis evaluation metrics. Experiments based on MFED showthat the mAP and F1-score of E2E-MFERC on classroom evaluation data reach 83.6% and 0.77, respectively,improving the mAP of same-scale You Only Look Once version 5 (YOLOv5) and You Only Look Once version8 (YOLOv8) by 6.8% and 2.5%, respectively, and the F1-score by 0.06 and 0.04, respectively. E2E-MFERC modelhas obvious advantages in both detection speed and accuracy, which can meet the practical needs of real-timemulti-face expression analysis in classrooms, and serve the application of teaching effect assessment very well.展开更多
Loquat(Eriobotrya japonica Lindl.),a rare fruit native to China,has a long history of cultivation in China.Low temperature is the key factor restricting loquat growth and severely affects yield.Low temperature induces...Loquat(Eriobotrya japonica Lindl.),a rare fruit native to China,has a long history of cultivation in China.Low temperature is the key factor restricting loquat growth and severely affects yield.Low temperature induces the regeneration and metabolism of reduced glutathione(GSH)to alleviate stress damage via the participation of glu-tathione S-transferases(GSTs)in plants.In this study,16 GSTs were identified from the loquat genome according to their protein sequence similarity with Arabidopsis GSTs.On the basis of domain characteristics and phyloge-netic analysis of AtGSTs,these EjGSTs can be divided into 4 subclasses:Phi,Theta,Tau and Zeta.The basic prop-erties,subcellular localization,structures,motifs,chromosomal distribution and collinearity of the EjGST proteins or genes were further analyzed.Tandem and segmental gene duplications play pivotal roles in EjGST expansion.Cis-elements that respond to various hormones and stresses,especially those associated with low-temperature responsiveness,were predicted to be present in the promoters of EjGSTs.Moreover,analysis of gene expression profiles revealed that 9 of 16 EjGSTs may be involved in the low-temperature responsiveness of loquat leaves.In agriculture,5-aminolevulinic acid(ALA),a potential multifunctional plant growth regulator,can improve the stress response of plants.Among the 9 low-temperature-responsive EjGSTs,the expression of EjGSTU1 and EjGSTF1 significantly differed under cold stress in response to exogenous 5-aminolevulinic acid(ALA)pretreat-ment.The remarkable increase in GST activity and GSH/GSSG ratio reflected the increase in the cold response ability of loquat plants caused by exogenous ALA,thereby alleviating H2O2 accumulation and membrane lipid preoxidation.Overall,this study provides an initial exploration of the cold tolerance function of GSTs in loquat,offering a theoretical foundation for the development of cold-resistant loquat cultivars and new antifreeze agents.展开更多
The cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase(CKX)enzyme is essential for controlling thefluctuating levels of endogen-ous cytokinin(CK)and has a significant impact on different aspects of plant growth and development.Nonethe-les...The cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase(CKX)enzyme is essential for controlling thefluctuating levels of endogen-ous cytokinin(CK)and has a significant impact on different aspects of plant growth and development.Nonethe-less,there is limited knowledge about CKX genes in tomato(Solanum lycopersicum L.).Here we performed genome-wide identification and analysis of nine SlCKX family members in tomatoes using bioinformatics tools.The results revealed that nine SlCKX genes were unevenly distributed onfive chromosomes(Chr.1,Chr.4,Chr.8,Chr.10,and Chr.12).The amino acid length,isoelectric points,and molecular weight of the nine SlCKX proteins ranged from 453 to 553,5.77 to 8.59,and 51.661 to 62.494 kD,respectively.Subcellular localization analysis indi-cated that SlCKX2 proteins were located in both the vacuole and cytoplasmic matrix;SlCKX3 and SlCKX5 pro-teins were located in the vacuole;and SlCKX1,4,6,7,8,and 9 proteins were located in the cytoplasmic matrix.Furthermore,we observed differences in the gene structures and phylogenetic relationships of SlCKX proteins among different members.SlCKX1-9 were positioned on two out of the three branches of the CKX phylogenetic tree in the multispecies phylogenetic tree construction,revealing their strong conservation within phylogenetic subgroups.Unique patterns of expression of CKX genes were noticed in callus cultures exposed to varying con-centrations of exogenous ZT,suggesting their roles in specific developmental and physiological functions in the regeneration system.These results may facilitate subsequent functional analysis of SlCKX genes and provide valu-able insights for establishing an efficient regeneration system for tomatoes.展开更多
Convolutional neural networks struggle to accurately handle changes in angles and twists in the direction of images,which affects their ability to recognize patterns based on internal feature levels. In contrast, Caps...Convolutional neural networks struggle to accurately handle changes in angles and twists in the direction of images,which affects their ability to recognize patterns based on internal feature levels. In contrast, CapsNet overcomesthese limitations by vectorizing information through increased directionality and magnitude, ensuring that spatialinformation is not overlooked. Therefore, this study proposes a novel expression recognition technique calledCAPSULE-VGG, which combines the strengths of CapsNet and convolutional neural networks. By refining andintegrating features extracted by a convolutional neural network before introducing theminto CapsNet, ourmodelenhances facial recognition capabilities. Compared to traditional neural network models, our approach offersfaster training pace, improved convergence speed, and higher accuracy rates approaching stability. Experimentalresults demonstrate that our method achieves recognition rates of 74.14% for the FER2013 expression dataset and99.85% for the CK+ expression dataset. By contrasting these findings with those obtained using conventionalexpression recognition techniques and incorporating CapsNet’s advantages, we effectively address issues associatedwith convolutional neural networks while increasing expression identification accuracy.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China,Nos.32371065(to CL)and 32170950(to LY)the Natural Science Foundation of the Guangdong Province,No.2023A1515010899(to CL)the Science and Technology Projects in Guangzhou,Nos.2023A4J0578 and 2024A03J0180(to CW)。
文摘Neuronal activity,synaptic transmission,and molecular changes in the basolateral amygdala play critical roles in fear memory.Cylindromatosis(CYLD)is a deubiquitinase that negatively regulates the nuclear factor kappa-B pathway.CYLD is well studied in non-neuronal cells,yet underinvestigated in the brain,where it is highly expressed.Emerging studies have shown involvement of CYLD in the remodeling of glutamatergic synapses,neuroinflammation,fear memory,and anxiety-and autism-like behaviors.However,the precise role of CYLD in glutamatergic neurons is largely unknown.Here,we first proposed involvement of CYLD in cued fear expression.We next constructed transgenic model mice with specific deletion of Cyld from glutamatergic neurons.Our results show that glutamatergic CYLD deficiency exaggerated the expression of cued fear in only male mice.Further,loss of CYLD in glutamatergic neurons resulted in enhanced neuronal activation,impaired excitatory synaptic transmission,and altered levels of glutamate receptors accompanied by over-activation of microglia in the basolateral amygdala of male mice.Altogether,our study suggests a critical role of glutamatergic CYLD in maintaining normal neuronal,synaptic,and microglial activation.This may contribute,at least in part,to cued fear expression.
文摘Objective INF2 is a member of the formins family.Abnormal expression and regulation of INF2 have been associated with the progression of various tumors,but the expression and role of INF2 in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)remain unclear.HCC is a highly lethal malignant tumor.Given the limitations of traditional treatments,this study explored the expression level,clinical value and potential mechanism of INF2 in HCC in order to seek new therapeutic targets.Methods In this study,we used public databases to analyze the expression of INF2 in pan-cancer and HCC,as well as the impact of INF2 expression levels on HCC prognosis.Quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction(RT-qPCR),Western blot,and immunohistochemistry were used to detect the expression level of INF2 in liver cancer cells and human HCC tissues.The correlation between INF2 expression and clinical pathological features was analyzed using public databases and clinical data of human HCC samples.Subsequently,the effects of INF2 expression on the biological function and Drp1 phosphorylation of liver cancer cells were elucidated through in vitro and in vivo experiments.Finally,the predictive value and potential mechanism of INF2 in HCC were further analyzed through database and immunohistochemical experiments.Results INF2 is aberrantly high expression in HCC samples and the high expression of INF2 is correlated with overall survival,liver cirrhosis and pathological differentiation of HCC patients.The expression level of INF2 has certain diagnostic value in predicting the prognosis and pathological differentiation of HCC.In vivo and in vitro HCC models,upregulated expression of INF2 triggers the proliferation and migration of the HCC cell,while knockdown of INF2 could counteract this effect.INF2 in liver cancer cells may affect mitochondrial division by inducing Drp1 phosphorylation and mediate immune escape by up-regulating PD-L1 expression,thus promoting tumor progression.Conclusion INF2 is highly expressed in HCC and is associated with poor prognosis.High expression of INF2 may promote HCC progression by inducing Drp1 phosphorylation and up-regulation of PD-L1 expression,and targeting INF2 may be beneficial for HCC patients with high expression of INF2.
基金supported by the National Characteristic Vegetable Industry Technology System of China(Grant No.CARS24-A-07)the Jiangsu Modern Agricultural Industry Technology System Construction Special Fund(Grant No.JATS[2023]050)Xuzhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences Research Fund Project(Grant No.XM2021003)。
文摘Commercial cultivars of garlic,a popular condiment,are sterile,making genetic variation and germplasm innovation of this plant challenging.Understanding mechanism of gamete sterility in garlic and their key regulatory networks is therefore important for fertility restoration.In this work,we conducted a detailed phenotypic analysis of fertile and sterile garlic genotypes and found that enlargement of topset in the inflorescence of sterile genotypes led to abnormal flowers.Additional cytological observations showed that aberrant meiotic cytokinesis in sterile garlic ultimately resulted in pollen degeneration.Transcriptomics analysis of sterile and fertile genotypes identified possible molecular mechanisms underlying gamete abortion.A total of 100710 differentially expressed genes(DEGs)between the fertile and sterile garlic flowers at three stages of gamete development were identified,many of which were involved in homologous chromosome synapsis during meiosis,MYB transcription factor regulation,ribosome biogenesis and plant hormone signal transduction.Taken together,these results provide insight into the molecular mechanisms and regulatory networks underlying gamete development in garlic and point to a set of candidate genes for further functional characterization.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.81872686 and 82173611)the National Key Research and Development Program of China(Grant No.2018YFC2000703)the Priority Academic Program for the Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions(Public Health and Preventive Medicine)。
文摘Hypertension(HT)is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.Krüppel-like factors(KLFs)are important transcription factors in eukaryotes.Studies have reported that KLF4 and KLF5 are correlated with several cardiovascular diseases,but population-based studies on associations between HT and KLF4 or KLF5 have rarely been reported.Therefore,the current study investigated the associations of genetic variants and m RNA expression levels of KLF4 and KLF5 with HT,as well as the effects of antihypertensive drugs on the expression levels of these genes.The associations of one single-nucleotide polymorphism(SNP)in KLF4 and three SNPs in KLF5with HT were analyzed using a combination of case-control and cohort studies.The study populations were selected from a community-based cohort in four regions of Jiangsu province.The risks of HT were estimated through logistic and Cox regression analyses.In addition,m RNA expression levels of KLF4 and KLF5 were detected in 246 controls and 385 HT cases selected from the aforementioned cohort.Among the HT cases,263were not taking antihypertensive drugs[AHD(-)]and 122 were taking antihypertensive drugs[AHD(+)].In the case-control study,SNP rs9573096(C>T)in KLF5 was significantly associated with an increased risk of HT in the additive model(adjusted odds ratio[OR],1.106;95%confidence interval[CI],1.009 to 1.212).In the cohort study of the normotensive population,rs9573096 in KLF5 was also significantly associated with an increased risk of HT in the additive model(adjusted hazards ratio[HR],1.199;95%CI,1.070 to 1.344).KLF4 and KLF5m RNA expression levels were significantly higher in the AHD(-)group than in the control group(P<0.05),but lower in the AHD(+)group than in the AHD(-)group(P<0.05).The current study demonstrated the associations of KLF4 and KLF5 genetic variants with hypertension,as well as the association of the indicative variations in m RNA expression levels of KLF4 and KLF5 with the risk of hypertension and antihypertensive treatment.
基金supported by China Academy of Railway Sciences Corporation Limited(No.2021YJ127).
文摘Artificial intelligence,such as deep learning technology,has advanced the study of facial expression recognition since facial expression carries rich emotional information and is significant for many naturalistic situations.To pursue a high facial expression recognition accuracy,the network model of deep learning is generally designed to be very deep while the model’s real-time performance is typically constrained and limited.With MobileNetV3,a lightweight model with a good accuracy,a further study is conducted by adding a basic ResNet module to each of its existing modules and an SSH(Single Stage Headless Face Detector)context module to expand the model’s perceptual field.In this article,the enhanced model named Res-MobileNetV3,could alleviate the subpar of real-time performance and compress the size of large network models,which can process information at a rate of up to 33 frames per second.Although the improved model has been verified to be slightly inferior to the current state-of-the-art method in aspect of accuracy rate on the publically available face expression datasets,it can bring a good balance on accuracy,real-time performance,model size and model complexity in practical applications.
文摘DNA microarray technology is an extremely effective technique for studying gene expression patterns in cells, and the main challenge currently faced by this technology is how to analyze the large amount of gene expression data generated. To address this, this paper employs a mixed-effects model to analyze gene expression data. In terms of data selection, 1176 genes from the white mouse gene expression dataset under two experimental conditions were chosen, setting up two conditions: pneumococcal infection and no infection, and constructing a mixed-effects model. After preprocessing the gene chip information, the data were imported into the model, preliminary results were calculated, and permutation tests were performed to biologically validate the preliminary results using GSEA. The final dataset consists of 20 groups of gene expression data from pneumococcal infection, which categorizes functionally related genes based on the similarity of their expression profiles, facilitating the study of genes with unknown functions.
基金financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(32102559)the Jiangsu Shuang Chuang Tuan Dui Program,China(JSSCTD202147)the Jiangsu Shuang Chuang Ren Cai Program,China(JSSCRC2021541)。
文摘Excessive abdominal fat deposition seriously restricts the production efficiency of broilers.Several studies found that dietary supplemental manganese(Mn)could effectively reduce the abdominal fat deposition of broilers,but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear.The present study aimed to investigate the effect of dietary supplementation with the inorganic or organic Mn on abdominal fat deposition,and enzyme activity and gene expression involved in lipid metabolism in the abdominal fat of male or female broilers.A total of 4201-d-old AA broilers(half males and half females)were randomly allotted by body weight and gender to 1 of 6 treatments with 10 replicates cages of 7 chicks per cage in a completely randomized design involving a 3(dietary Mn addition)×2(gender)factorial arrangement.Male or female broilers were fed with the Mn-unsupplemented basal diets containing 17.52 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 1-21)and 15.62 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 22-42)by analysis or the basal diets supplemented with 110 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 1-21)and 80 mg Mn kg^(-1)(d 22-42)as either the Mn sulfate or the Mn proteinate with moderate chelation strength(Mn-Prot M)for 42 d.The results showed that the interaction between dietary Mn addition and gender had no impact(P>0.05)on any of the measured parameters;abdominal fat percentage of broilers was decreased(P<0.003)by Mn addition;Mn addition increased(P<0.004)adipose triglyceride lipase(ATGL)activity,while Mn-Prot M decreased(P<0.002)the fatty acid synthase(FAS)activity in the abdominal fat of broilers compared to the control;Mn addition decreased(P<0.009)diacylglycerol acyltransferase 2(DGAT2)mRNA expression level and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ(PPARγ)mRNA and protein expression levels,but up-regulated(P<0.05)the ATGL mRNA and protein expression levels in the abdominal fat of broilers.It was concluded that dietary supplementation with Mn inhibited the abdominal fat deposition of broilers possibly via decreasing the expression of PPARγand DGAT2 as well as increasing the expression and activity of ATGL in the abdominal fat of broilers,and Mn-Prot M was more effective in inhibiting the FAS acitivity.
基金financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China,No.81303115,81774042 (both to XC)the Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou,No.201806010025 (to XC)+3 种基金the Specialty Program of Guangdong Province Hospital of Chinese Medicine of China,No.YN2018ZD07 (to XC)the Natural Science Foundatior of Guangdong Province of China,No.2023A1515012174 (to JL)the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou of China,No.20210201 0268 (to XC),20210201 0339 (to JS)Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Research on Emergency in TCM,Nos.2018-75,2019-140 (to JS)
文摘Vascular etiology is the second most prevalent cause of cognitive impairment globally.Endothelin-1,which is produced and secreted by endothelial cells and astrocytes,is implicated in the pathogenesis of stroke.However,the way in which changes in astrocytic endothelin-1 lead to poststroke cognitive deficits following transient middle cerebral artery occlusion is not well understood.Here,using mice in which astrocytic endothelin-1 was overexpressed,we found that the selective overexpression of endothelin-1 by astrocytic cells led to ischemic stroke-related dementia(1 hour of ischemia;7 days,28 days,or 3 months of reperfusion).We also revealed that astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression contributed to the role of neural stem cell proliferation but impaired neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus after middle cerebral artery occlusion.Comprehensive proteome profiles and western blot analysis confirmed that levels of glial fibrillary acidic protein and peroxiredoxin 6,which were differentially expressed in the brain,were significantly increased in mice with astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression in comparison with wild-type mice 28 days after ischemic stroke.Moreover,the levels of the enriched differentially expressed proteins were closely related to lipid metabolism,as indicated by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis.Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry nontargeted metabolite profiling of brain tissues showed that astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression altered lipid metabolism products such as glycerol phosphatidylcholine,sphingomyelin,and phosphatidic acid.Overall,this study demonstrates that astrocytic endothelin-1 overexpression can impair hippocampal neurogenesis and that it is correlated with lipid metabolism in poststroke cognitive dysfunction.
基金supported by the Fujian Province Seed Industry Innovation and Industrialization Project“Innovation and Industrialization Development of Precious Tree Seed Industries(Phoebe bornei)”(ZYCX-LY-202102)the Sub-project of National Key R&D Program“Phoebe bornei Efficient Cultivation Technology”(2016YFD0600603-2).
文摘Heat shock transcription factors(Hsfs)have important roles during plant growth and development and responses to abiotic stresses.The identification and func-tion of Hsf genes have been thoroughly studied in various herbaceous plant species,but not woody species,especially Phoebe bournei,an endangered,unique species in China.In this study,17 members of the Hsf gene family were identi-fied from P.bournei using bioinformatic methods.Phyloge-netic analysis indicated that PbHsf genes were grouped into three subfamilies:A,B,and C.Conserved motifs,three-dimensional structure,and physicochemical properties of the PbHsf proteins were also analyzed.The structure of the PbHsf genes varied in the number of exons and introns.Pre-diction of cis-acting elements in the promoter region indi-cated that PbHsf genes are likely involved in responses to plant hormones and stresses.A collinearity analysis dem-onstrated that expansions of the PbHsf gene family mainly take place via segmental duplication.The expression levels of PbHsf genes varied across different plant tissues.On the basis of the expression profiles of five representative PbHsf genes during heat,cold,salt,and drought stress,PbHsf pro-teins seem to have multiple functions depending on the type of abiotic stress.This systematic,genome-wide investigation of PbHsf genes in P.bournei and their expression patterns provides valuable insights and information for further func-tional dissection of Hsf proteins in this endangered,unique species.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U20A2002)China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2023T160284)recipient of a research productivity fellowship from CNPq (National Council of Scientific and Technological Development) in Brazil
文摘Background Milk synthesis in lactating animals demands high energy metabolism,which results in an increased production of reactive oxygen metabolites(ROM)causing an imbalance between oxidants and antioxidants thereby inducing oxidative stress(OS)on the animals.To mitigate OS and postpartum disorders in dairy goats and gain insight into the impact of dietary choices on redox status during lactation,a feeding trial was conducted using alfalfa silage inoculated with a high-antioxidant strain of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum.Methods Twenty-four Guanzhong dairy goats(38.1±1.20 kg)were randomly assigned to two dietary treatments:one containing silage inoculated with L.plantarum MTD/1(RSMTD-1),and the other containing silage inoculated with high antioxidant activity L.plantarum 24-7(ES24-7).Results ES24-7-inoculated silage exhibited better fermentation quality and antioxidant activity compared to RSMTD-1.The ES24-7 diet elevated the total antioxidant capacity(T-AOC),superoxide dismutase(SOD),glutathione peroxi-dase(GSH-Px),and catalase(CAT)activities in milk,serum,and feces of lactating goats(with the exception of T-AOC in milk).Additionally,the diet containing ES24-7 inoculated silage enhanced casein yield,milk free fatty acid(FFA)content,and vitamin A level in the goats’milk.Furthermore,an increase of immunoglobulin(Ig)A,IgG,IgM,inter-leukin(IL)-4,and IL-10 concentrations were observed,coupled with a reduction in IL-1β,IL-2,IL-6,interferon(IFN)-γ,and tumor necrosis factor(TNF)-αconcentrations in the serum of lactating goats fed ES24-7.Higher concentrations of total volatile fatty acid(VFA),acetate,and propionate were observed in the rumen fluid of dairy goats fed ES24-7 inoculated silage.Moreover,the diet containing ES24-7 inoculated silage significantly upregulated the expression of nuclear factor erythroid 2 like 2(NFE2L2),beta-carotene oxygenase 1(BCO1),SOD1,SOD2,SOD3,GPX2,CAT,glu-tathione-disulfide reductase(GSR),and heme oxygenase 1(HMOX1)genes in the mammary gland,while decreased the levels of NADPH oxidase 4(NOX4),TNF,and interferon gamma(IFNG).Conclusions These findings indicated that feeding L.plantarum 24-7 inoculated alfalfa silage not only improved rumen fermentation and milk quality in lactating dairy goats but also boosted their immunity and antioxidant status by modulating the expression of several genes related to antioxidant and inflammation in the mammary gland.
基金the Key Scientific Research Projects of Henan Province to College Youth Backbone Teacher(No.2021118)the National Key Research and Development Program of China(No.2021YFE0112000)。
文摘Pyraclostrobin(PYR),a widely used fungicide,has negative effects on fish and algae,but its toxicity in protozoa remains unclear.In this study,the effects of PYR on the growth,oxidative stress,and gene expression related to stress and ATP-binding cassette(ABC)transporters in Tetrahymena thermophila were investigated.The result showed that the 96-h IC_(50)of PYR against T.thermophila was 17.2 mg/L.Moreover,PYR inhibited the growth of T.thermophila in concentration-or time-dependent manner.A morphological study revealed that the shape and size of T.thermophila changed,and damage of cell membrane surface was observed by scanning electron microscopy after 96 h of PYR exposure.The activities of superoxide dismutase(SOD)and catalase(CAT)increased throughout the experiment.In contrast,the glutathione(GSH)content was increased at 24 h and 48 h of exposure and decreased at 96 h.Moreover,a significant increase in malondialdehyde(MDA)level was observed in T.thermophila after96 h of exposure.Furthermore,PYR upregulated the HSP703,HSP705,GPx2,and ABAC15 gene expression in the 0.1–5-mg/L groups and downregulated the HSP704,HSP90,TGR,and ABCC52 mRNA levels at 96 h of exposure.These results suggest that PYR may exert adverse effects on T.thermophila by inducing oxidative stress and changing the gene expression related to ABC transporters and stress,which may enrich the understanding of the toxicity mechanism of PYR in aquatic organisms and provide reference data for aquatic ecological risk assessments.
基金supported by Young Experts of Taishan Scholars(No.tsqn 201909130)the Science and Technology Support Plan for Youth Innovation of Colleges and Universities in Shandong Province(No.2019KJF003)+1 种基金the Shandong Technical System of Fish Industry(No.SDAIT12-03),the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province(No.ZR2022QC037)the High-Level Talents Research Fund of Qingdao Agricultural University(No.663/1120033)。
文摘Mucin family members play an indispensable role in immunity against pathogen invasion.Currently,there are very few studies on members of the mucin family in Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus.In this regard,we characterized the mucin members in Japanese flounder as well as their involvement in response to pathogen infection.In our results,a total of 9 mucin genes were identified based on the whole genome database of flounder.Among them,MUC2-1,MUC2-2,MUC5AC-1,MUC5AC-2 and MUC5B are secreted mucins,while MUC3A,MUC3B,MUC13 and MUC15 are membrane binding mucins.The collinearity results showed that the adjacent MUC genes of flounder had collinearity relationship with many other teleosts.Phylogenetic tree results showed that the mucin gene of flounder was divided into several subfamilies.In addition,the expression patterns of flounder mucin family members were examined in 11 healthy tissues.The expression changes of mucin gene were also detected in six immune tissues(gill,intestine,skin,liver,kidney,spleen)after pathogen infection,revealing their role in disease resistance.Collinear analysis indicates the adjacent mucin genes.According to the protein interaction network(PPI)results,the mucin genes interact with the galnt genes.The results provide a solid foundation for further research on the function of mucins in mucosal immunity of flounder.
基金Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province,China(No.ZR2023MA069)the Medical and Health Technology Development Project of Shandong Province,China(No.202202050602)+1 种基金College Students’Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program(No.S202410438017)the Graduate Student Research Grant from Shandong Second Medical University.
文摘AIM:To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the influence of hypoxia and alpha-ketoglutaric acid(α-KG)on scleral collagen expression.METHODS:Meta-analysis and clinical statistics were used to prove the changes in choroidal thickness(ChT)during myopia.The establishment of a hypoxic myopia model(HYP)for rabbit scleral fibroblasts through hypoxic culture and the effects of hypoxia andα-KG on collagen expression were demonstrated by Sirius red staining.Transcriptome analysis was used to verify the genes and pathways that hypoxia andα-KG affect collagen expression.Finally,real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction(RT-qPCR)was used for reverse verification.RESULTS:Meta-analysis results aligned with clinical statistics,revealing a thinning of ChT,leading to scleral hypoxia.Sirius red staining indicated lower collagen expression in the HYP group and higher collagen expression in the HYP+α-KG group,showed that hypoxia reduced collagen expression in scleral fibroblasts,whileα-KG can elevated collagen expression under HYP conditions.Transcriptome analysis unveiled the related genes and signaling pathways of hypoxia andα-KG affect scleral collagen expression and the results were verified by RT-qPCR.CONCLUSION:The potential molecular mechanisms through which hypoxia andα-KG influencing myopia is unraveled and three novel genes TLCD4,TBC1D4,and EPHX3 are identified.These findings provide a new perspective on the prevention and treatment of myopia via regulating collagen expression.
基金supported by National Science Foundation of China(61971078)Chongqing Municipal Education Commission Science and Technology Major Project(KJZDM202301901).
文摘The effectiveness of facial expression recognition(FER)algorithms hinges on the model’s quality and the availability of a substantial amount of labeled expression data.However,labeling large datasets demands significant human,time,and financial resources.Although active learning methods have mitigated the dependency on extensive labeled data,a cold-start problem persists in small to medium-sized expression recognition datasets.This issue arises because the initial labeled data often fails to represent the full spectrum of facial expression characteristics.This paper introduces an active learning approach that integrates uncertainty estimation,aiming to improve the precision of facial expression recognition regardless of dataset scale variations.The method is divided into two primary phases.First,the model undergoes self-supervised pre-training using contrastive learning and uncertainty estimation to bolster its feature extraction capabilities.Second,the model is fine-tuned using the prior knowledge obtained from the pre-training phase to significantly improve recognition accuracy.In the pretraining phase,the model employs contrastive learning to extract fundamental feature representations from the complete unlabeled dataset.These features are then weighted through a self-attention mechanism with rank regularization.Subsequently,data from the low-weighted set is relabeled to further refine the model’s feature extraction ability.The pre-trained model is then utilized in active learning to select and label information-rich samples more efficiently.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing approaches,achieving an improvement in recognition accuracy of 5.09%and 3.82%over the best existing active learning methods,Margin,and Least Confidence methods,respectively,and a 1.61%improvement compared to the conventional segmented active learning method.
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(32060466)Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences。
文摘Background Photosystem II(PSII)constitutes an intricate assembly of protein pigments,featuring extrinsic and intrinsic polypeptides within the photosynthetic membrane.The low-molecular-weight transmembrane protein PsbX has been identified in PSII,which is associated with the oxygen-evolving complex.The expression of PsbX gene protein is regulated by light.PsbX’s central role involves the regulation of PSII,facilitating the binding of quinone molecules to the Qb(PsbA)site,and it additionally plays a crucial role in optimizing the efficiency of photosynthesis.Despite these insights,a comprehensive understanding of the PsbX gene’s functions has remained elusive.Results In this study,we identified ten PsbX genes in Gossypium hirsutum L.The phylogenetic analysis results showed that 40 genes from nine species were classified into one clade.The resulting sequence logos exhibited substantial conservation across the N and C terminals at multiple sites among all Gossypium species.Furthermore,the ortholo-gous/paralogous,Ka/Ks ratio revealed that cotton PsbX genes subjected to positive as well as purifying selection pressure might lead to limited divergence,which resulted in the whole genome and segmental duplication.The expression patterns of GhPsbX genes exhibited variations across specific tissues,as indicated by the analysis.Moreover,the expression of GhPsbX genes could potentially be regulated in response to salt,intense light,and drought stresses.Therefore,GhPsbX genes may play a significant role in the modulation of photosynthesis under adverse abiotic conditions.Conclusion We examined the structure and function of PsbX gene family very first by using comparative genom-ics and systems biology approaches in cotton.It seems that PsbX gene family plays a vital role during the growth and development of cotton under stress conditions.Collectively,the results of this study provide basic information to unveil the molecular and physiological function of PsbX genes of cotton plants.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.62276051the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province under Grant No.2023NSFSC0640Medical Industry Information Integration Collaborative Innovation Project of Yangtze Delta Region Institute under Grant No.U0723002。
文摘The estimation of pain intensity is critical for medical diagnosis and treatment of patients.With the development of image monitoring technology and artificial intelligence,automatic pain assessment based on facial expression and behavioral analysis shows a potential value in clinical applications.This paper reports a framework of convolutional neural network with global and local attention mechanism(GLA-CNN)for the effective detection of pain intensity at four-level thresholds using facial expression images.GLA-CNN includes two modules,namely global attention network(GANet)and local attention network(LANet).LANet is responsible for extracting representative local patch features of faces,while GANet extracts whole facial features to compensate for the ignored correlative features between patches.In the end,the global correlational and local subtle features are fused for the final estimation of pain intensity.Experiments under the UNBC-McMaster Shoulder Pain database demonstrate that GLA-CNN outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.Additionally,a visualization analysis is conducted to present the feature map of GLA-CNN,intuitively showing that it can extract not only local pain features but also global correlative facial ones.Our study demonstrates that pain assessment based on facial expression is a non-invasive and feasible method,and can be employed as an auxiliary pain assessment tool in clinical practice.
基金the Science and Technology Project of State Grid Corporation of China under Grant No.5700-202318292A-1-1-ZN.
文摘In smart classrooms, conducting multi-face expression recognition based on existing hardware devices to assessstudents’ group emotions can provide educators with more comprehensive and intuitive classroom effect analysis,thereby continuouslypromotingthe improvementof teaching quality.However,most existingmulti-face expressionrecognition methods adopt a multi-stage approach, with an overall complex process, poor real-time performance,and insufficient generalization ability. In addition, the existing facial expression datasets are mostly single faceimages, which are of low quality and lack specificity, also restricting the development of this research. This paperaims to propose an end-to-end high-performance multi-face expression recognition algorithm model suitable forsmart classrooms, construct a high-quality multi-face expression dataset to support algorithm research, and applythe model to group emotion assessment to expand its application value. To this end, we propose an end-to-endmulti-face expression recognition algorithm model for smart classrooms (E2E-MFERC). In order to provide highqualityand highly targeted data support for model research, we constructed a multi-face expression dataset inreal classrooms (MFED), containing 2,385 images and a total of 18,712 expression labels, collected from smartclassrooms. In constructing E2E-MFERC, by introducing Re-parameterization visual geometry group (RepVGG)block and symmetric positive definite convolution (SPD-Conv) modules to enhance representational capability;combined with the cross stage partial network fusion module optimized by attention mechanism (C2f_Attention),it strengthens the ability to extract key information;adopts asymptotic feature pyramid network (AFPN) featurefusion tailored to classroomscenes and optimizes the head prediction output size;achieves high-performance endto-end multi-face expression detection. Finally, we apply the model to smart classroom group emotion assessmentand provide design references for classroom effect analysis evaluation metrics. Experiments based on MFED showthat the mAP and F1-score of E2E-MFERC on classroom evaluation data reach 83.6% and 0.77, respectively,improving the mAP of same-scale You Only Look Once version 5 (YOLOv5) and You Only Look Once version8 (YOLOv8) by 6.8% and 2.5%, respectively, and the F1-score by 0.06 and 0.04, respectively. E2E-MFERC modelhas obvious advantages in both detection speed and accuracy, which can meet the practical needs of real-timemulti-face expression analysis in classrooms, and serve the application of teaching effect assessment very well.
基金This research was funded by grants from the Fujian Provincial Science and Technology Project(2021N5014,2022N5006)the Science and Technology Plan Project of Putian(2023GJGZ001).
文摘Loquat(Eriobotrya japonica Lindl.),a rare fruit native to China,has a long history of cultivation in China.Low temperature is the key factor restricting loquat growth and severely affects yield.Low temperature induces the regeneration and metabolism of reduced glutathione(GSH)to alleviate stress damage via the participation of glu-tathione S-transferases(GSTs)in plants.In this study,16 GSTs were identified from the loquat genome according to their protein sequence similarity with Arabidopsis GSTs.On the basis of domain characteristics and phyloge-netic analysis of AtGSTs,these EjGSTs can be divided into 4 subclasses:Phi,Theta,Tau and Zeta.The basic prop-erties,subcellular localization,structures,motifs,chromosomal distribution and collinearity of the EjGST proteins or genes were further analyzed.Tandem and segmental gene duplications play pivotal roles in EjGST expansion.Cis-elements that respond to various hormones and stresses,especially those associated with low-temperature responsiveness,were predicted to be present in the promoters of EjGSTs.Moreover,analysis of gene expression profiles revealed that 9 of 16 EjGSTs may be involved in the low-temperature responsiveness of loquat leaves.In agriculture,5-aminolevulinic acid(ALA),a potential multifunctional plant growth regulator,can improve the stress response of plants.Among the 9 low-temperature-responsive EjGSTs,the expression of EjGSTU1 and EjGSTF1 significantly differed under cold stress in response to exogenous 5-aminolevulinic acid(ALA)pretreat-ment.The remarkable increase in GST activity and GSH/GSSG ratio reflected the increase in the cold response ability of loquat plants caused by exogenous ALA,thereby alleviating H2O2 accumulation and membrane lipid preoxidation.Overall,this study provides an initial exploration of the cold tolerance function of GSTs in loquat,offering a theoretical foundation for the development of cold-resistant loquat cultivars and new antifreeze agents.
基金funded by the Special Project for Science and Technology Innovation Platform of Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences,China(CXPT2023003)the Freely Explore Scientific and Technology Innovation Program of Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences(ZYTS202207)the Program for Innovative Research Team of Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences,China(CXTD2021006-3)。
文摘The cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase(CKX)enzyme is essential for controlling thefluctuating levels of endogen-ous cytokinin(CK)and has a significant impact on different aspects of plant growth and development.Nonethe-less,there is limited knowledge about CKX genes in tomato(Solanum lycopersicum L.).Here we performed genome-wide identification and analysis of nine SlCKX family members in tomatoes using bioinformatics tools.The results revealed that nine SlCKX genes were unevenly distributed onfive chromosomes(Chr.1,Chr.4,Chr.8,Chr.10,and Chr.12).The amino acid length,isoelectric points,and molecular weight of the nine SlCKX proteins ranged from 453 to 553,5.77 to 8.59,and 51.661 to 62.494 kD,respectively.Subcellular localization analysis indi-cated that SlCKX2 proteins were located in both the vacuole and cytoplasmic matrix;SlCKX3 and SlCKX5 pro-teins were located in the vacuole;and SlCKX1,4,6,7,8,and 9 proteins were located in the cytoplasmic matrix.Furthermore,we observed differences in the gene structures and phylogenetic relationships of SlCKX proteins among different members.SlCKX1-9 were positioned on two out of the three branches of the CKX phylogenetic tree in the multispecies phylogenetic tree construction,revealing their strong conservation within phylogenetic subgroups.Unique patterns of expression of CKX genes were noticed in callus cultures exposed to varying con-centrations of exogenous ZT,suggesting their roles in specific developmental and physiological functions in the regeneration system.These results may facilitate subsequent functional analysis of SlCKX genes and provide valu-able insights for establishing an efficient regeneration system for tomatoes.
基金the following funds:The Key Scientific Research Project of Anhui Provincial Research Preparation Plan in 2023(Nos.2023AH051806,2023AH052097,2023AH052103)Anhui Province Quality Engineering Project(Nos.2022sx099,2022cxtd097)+1 种基金University-Level Teaching and Research Key Projects(Nos.ch21jxyj01,XLZ-202208,XLZ-202106)Special Support Plan for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Leaders in Anhui Province。
文摘Convolutional neural networks struggle to accurately handle changes in angles and twists in the direction of images,which affects their ability to recognize patterns based on internal feature levels. In contrast, CapsNet overcomesthese limitations by vectorizing information through increased directionality and magnitude, ensuring that spatialinformation is not overlooked. Therefore, this study proposes a novel expression recognition technique calledCAPSULE-VGG, which combines the strengths of CapsNet and convolutional neural networks. By refining andintegrating features extracted by a convolutional neural network before introducing theminto CapsNet, ourmodelenhances facial recognition capabilities. Compared to traditional neural network models, our approach offersfaster training pace, improved convergence speed, and higher accuracy rates approaching stability. Experimentalresults demonstrate that our method achieves recognition rates of 74.14% for the FER2013 expression dataset and99.85% for the CK+ expression dataset. By contrasting these findings with those obtained using conventionalexpression recognition techniques and incorporating CapsNet’s advantages, we effectively address issues associatedwith convolutional neural networks while increasing expression identification accuracy.
