Description: Diamond–Blackfan anemia (DBA) was the first ribosomopathy associated with mutations in ribosome protein (RP) genes. The clinical phenotypes of DBA include failure of erythropoiesis, congenital anomalies and ca...

Description: Journal of the American Chemical Society DOI: 10.1021/ja406484v

Description: In our previous studies, we found that plague vaccines can induce long-term antibody response, but no significant antibody boost was observed when the immunized mice were challenged with virulent Y. pestis . However, a booster vaccination of subunit vaccine on week 3 after primary immunization elicited a significantly higher antibody titer than a single dose, whereas no significant antibody titer difference was observed between a single dose and two doses of EV76 vaccination. To address these issues, in this study, we first investigated the kinetics of memory B cells and plasma cells in the mice immunized with EV76 or F1 protein by flow cytometry, and then determined antibody titer in five groups of mice immunized with various vaccination strategy. The results showed that memory B cells dropped to a low level at day 56 after primary immunization. In contrast, plasma cells were maintained for more than 98 days. The group with primary immunization of EV76 and booster of F1 antigen developed a higher antibody titer than the group with immunization of F1 antigen and booster of EV76. This result supports a hypothesis that an excess of antigens can neutralize preexisting antibodies, and then the redundant antigen induces antibody boost. Taken together, a boost of antibody titer after revaccination may be dependent on the existence of memory B cells and an excess of antigen vaccination. In addition, the present study showed an ideal immunization strategy that first immunization with a live attenuated vaccine, like EV76, and then with a subunit vaccine. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Description: Background: Orange-spotted grouper, Epinephelus coioides, is one of the most valuable fish species in China. Commercial production of orange-spotted grouper could be increased by developing higher growth rates and improving commercially important traits. Information on genetic markers associated with quantitative trait loci (QTL) can be used in breeding programs to identify and select individuals carrying desired traits. A high-density genetic linkage map is the basis for QTL study, and multiplexed shotgun genotyping (MSG) facilitates the development of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and genotyping. In this study, the first high-density genetic linkage maps for groupers were generated on the basis of the MSG method. Results: The sex-averaged map contained a total of 4,608 SNPs, which spanned 1581.7 cM, with a mean distance between SNPs of 0.34 cM. The 4,608 SNPs were located in 2,849 unique locations on the linkage map, with an average inter-location space at 0.56 cM. There were 2,516 SNPs on the female map, and the number of unique locus was 1,902. However, the male map contained more numbers of SNP (2,939) and unique locations (2,005). The total length of the female and male maps was 1,370.9 and 1,335.5 cM, respectively. Conclusions: The high-resolution genetic linkage maps will be very useful for QTL analyses and marker-assisted selection (MAS) for economically important traits in molecular breeding of the orange-spotted grouper.

Description: Organic Letters DOI: 10.1021/acs.orglett.8b00622

Description: ABSTRACT In this study, the variations of annual land surface air temperature (SAT) over Eurasia and the northern part of Africa (0°–180°E, 0°–90°N) were investigated using monthly SAT data from the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia for 1901–2014 and the simulations from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory coupled model. The observed results suggested that the SAT variations exhibited robust non-uniform spatial features at multi-time scales. For the variations in inter-annual to decadal time scales (IDV), the intensity generally increased from south to north, with the strongest intensity being around Siberia and four times that of the weakest intensity found around China. The IDV leading pattern showed a north–south dipole across 40°N. The simulated results suggested that the north–south dipole and the northwards increase of the IDV were due to internal interactions within the complex nonlinear climate system, but the natural and greenhouse gas forcings could intensify the IDV. The warming trend of the SAT was generally homogeneous, but it showed distinctive multi-decadal fluctuations in different regions. The linear secular trends and robust multi-decadal variation around Siberia and China corresponded to the considerable acceleration and deceleration in the warming over the two regions, respectively. The warming around Siberia was mainly caused by greenhouse gases but its modulation due to natural forcing was also considerable because of the robust multi-decadal variations. Around China, the multi-decadal variation, contributed by the natural forcing, can explain more than half the variances in the warming. The warming trend around central Asia was intense and parabolic, and the multi-decadal variation over there was weak and showed few modulating effects. This study disclosed (1) the considerable effect of multi-decadal variations on the warming trend around Siberia and China. (2) The internal interactions within the complex nonlinear climate system lead to a south–north dipole pattern of Eurasian land surface air temperature in inter-annual to decadal time scales. (a) Multi-decadal variations, (b) secular trends and (c) the sum of multi-decadal variations and secular trends derived from EEMDs of the surface air temperature around Siberia (red), China (blue) and Central Asia (green).

Description: ABSTRACT In this study, the year-to-year variability of surface air temperature (SAT) over China in winter was investigated during 1961–2014. The results indicate that the year-to-year SAT variability can explain more than 30% of the SAT variance over most parts of China, with up to 60% variance over southern China, northeastern China and northwestern China. The leading pattern of year-to-year SAT exhibits homogeneous variability over most parts of China, except in small areas over the Tibetan Plateau and southwestern China. The circulation over the northern Pacific is a key factor of this homogeneous variability pattern. An anomalous anticyclonic circulation and weakening midlatitude westerly jet in the middle and high troposphere over the northern Pacific are associated with the homogeneous warmth over China. The second pattern shows a south–north dipole, with variability in northeastern China opposite to that south of 25°N in China and over the Tibetan Plateau. The south–north dipole pattern is part of a global year-to-year SAT anomaly pattern because it exhibits a significant relationship with the year-to-year SAT over large parts north of 50°N over the Eurasian landmass. The north-cold/south-warm pattern is accompanied by a significant weakening of the Arctic Oscillation. In comparison, the atmospheric circulation anomalies associated with the homogeneous variability pattern are much weaker than those with the south–north dipole pattern. The anomalous Indian Ocean dipole in the previous autumn and the snow cover around China in November are the two key causes of the homogeneous variability pattern. Many factors, such as the tropical central Pacific sea surface temperature (SST), stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), Okhotsk sea ice and western Siberia snow cover, can significantly influence the south–north dipole pattern. Compared to the tropical Pacific SST, the impact of the Indian Ocean SST on the winter SAT over China is much more important. The leading pattern of interannual variability of winter surface air temperature (SAT) over China is regional whereas the second pattern is continental. The effect of Indian Ocean dipole on the winter SAT over China is more important than that of sea surface temperature over tropical Pacific. (a) Spatial distribution of the correlation coefficients between the PC1 of year-to-year winter SAT over China and the global year-to-year winter SAT; (b) the same as (a) but for PC2. Shadings denote the correlations exceeding the 95% confidence level.

Description: Background It is highly desirable in clinical abdominal MR scans to accelerate single-shot fast spin echo (SSFSE) imaging and reduce blurring due to T 2 decay and partial-Fourier acquisition. Purpose To develop and investigate the clinical feasibility of wave-encoded variable-density SSFSE imaging for improved image quality and scan time reduction. Study Type Prospective controlled clinical trial. Subjects With Institutional Review Board approval and informed consent, the proposed method was assessed on 20 consecutive adult patients (10 male, 10 female, range, 24–84 years). Field Strength/Sequence A wave-encoded variable-density SSFSE sequence was developed for clinical 3.0T abdominal scans to enable high acceleration (3.5×) with full-Fourier acquisitions by: 1) introducing wave encoding with self-refocusing gradient waveforms to improve acquisition efficiency; 2) developing self-calibrated estimation of wave-encoding point-spread function and coil sensitivity to improve motion robustness; and 3) incorporating a parallel imaging and compressed sensing reconstruction to reconstruct highly accelerated datasets. Assessment Image quality was compared pairwise with standard Cartesian acquisition independently and blindly by two radiologists on a scale from –2 to 2 for noise, contrast, confidence, sharpness, and artifacts. The average ratio of scan time between these two approaches was also compared. Statistical Tests A Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with a P value under 0.05 considered statistically significant. Results Wave-encoded variable-density SSFSE significantly reduced the perceived noise level and improved the sharpness of the abdominal wall and the kidneys compared with standard acquisition (mean scores 0.8, 1.2, and 0.8, respectively, P 〈 0.003). No significant difference was observed in relation to other features ( P = 0.11). An average of 21% decrease in scan time was achieved using the proposed method. Data Conclusion Wave-encoded variable-density sampling SSFSE achieves improved image quality with clinically relevant echo time and reduced scan time, thus providing a fast and robust approach for clinical SSFSE imaging. Level of Evidence: 1 Technical Efficacy Stage 6 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2017.

Description: ABSTRACT An abrupt change occasionally occurs when the dynamical system suddenly shifts from one stable state to a new state, which can take place in many complex systems, such as climate, ecosystem, social system, and so on. In order to detect abrupt change, this article presents a novel method – sliding transformation parameter (STP) on the basis of skewness change and the Box–Cox transformation. Tests on model time series and 1000 simulated daily precipitation data show the ability of the present method to identify and detect abrupt change of probability density function. The applications of STP in daily precipitation data show that there is an abrupt climate change between 1979 and 1980 in the selected observational stations, which is almost the same with the result obtained by approximate entropy (ApEn). Furthermore, it is found that the sample sizes of sliding windows have some influence on the Lambda parameter of the Box–Cox transformation, but it does not significantly affect the varying trend of the parameter and the identification of the change point in annual or interannual time scale. Comparing STP with the coefficient of skewness and kurtosis, ApEn, and some statistics approaches (e.g. percentiles and annual maxima), we find that the performance of the present method is much better than that of these methods.Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society

Description: Background: DNA methylation plays important biological roles in plants and animals. To examine rice genomic methylation landscape and assess its functional significance, we generated the single-base resolution DNA methylome maps for Asian cultivated rice Oryza sativa ssp. japonica, indica and their wild relatives, Oryza rufipogon and Oryza nivara. Results: The overall methylation level of rice genomes is four times higher than that of Arabidopsis. Consistent with the results reported for Arabidopsis, methylation in promoters represses gene expression while gene-body methylation generally appears to promote gene expression. Interestingly, we discovered that methylation in gene transcriptional termination regions (TTRs) can significantly repress gene expression, and the effect is even stronger than that of promoter methylation. Through integrated analysis of genomic, DNA methylomic and transcriptomic differences between cultivated and wild rice, we found that DNA sequence divergence may be the major determinant of methylational differences at the whole genome level, but DNA methylational difference can only account for limited gene expression variation between cultivated and wild rice. We also identified a number of genes with significant difference in methylation level between the wild and cultivated rice. Conclusions: The single-base resolution methylomes of rice obtained in this study have not only broadened our understanding of the mechanism and function of DNA methylation in plant genomes, but also provided valuable data for future studies on rice epigenetics as well as on epigenetic differentiation between wild and cultivated rice.