Whether or not the Altyn Tagh terranes in northwest China were part of the Rodinia supercontinent is unclear due to the apparent absence of rift-related igneous rocks. We present U-Pb geochronology, mineral chemistry, whole-rock major and trace element and Sr-Nd isotope data for the Yapuqiasayi mafic dykes in the North Altyn Tagh. Zircon and baddeleyite from a mafic dyke sample yield indistinguishable U-Pb results and a weighted mean 207Pb/206Pb date of 740 ± 11 Ma,...

A holistic strategy for discovering structural analogs was established using characteristic structural fragments filtering by high-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometry and successfully employed for discovering potential hazards in meat. The mass spectrometry fragmentation mechanisms of 113 compounds (including sulphonamides, tetracyclines, benzimidazoles, steroid hormones, cephalosporins, β-blockers) were investigated and a new strategy for screening of characteristic fragment ions was proposed. To process the data acquired by two scan modes, firstly an integrated filtering strategy was conducted to...

A holistic strategy for discovering structural analogs was established using characteristic structural fragments filtering by high-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometry and successfully employed for discovering potential hazards in meat. The mass spectrometry fragmentation mechanisms of 113 compounds (including sulphonamides, tetracyclines, benzimidazoles, steroid hormones, cephalosporins, β-blockers) were investigated and a new strategy for screening of characteristic fragment ions was proposed. To process the data acquired by two scan modes, firstly an integrated filtering strategy was conducted to...

Matrine is one of the major alkaloids extracted from Sophora flavescens Ait of the traditional Chinese medicine, was the main chemical ingredient of compounds of Kushen injection. The Matrine is considered as a promising therapeutic agent for curing nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), used either alone or combined with chemotherapeutic agents. In the present study, we focused on the possible roles of Matrine exerted on the self-renewal ability of stem-like cells of the NSCLC group,...

Acinetobacter baumannii, a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen, is a leading cause of hospital- and community-acquired infections. Acinetobacter baumannii can rapidly acquire diverse resistance mechanisms and undergo genetic modifications that confer resistance and persistence to all currently used clinical antibiotics. In this study, we found exogenous L-lysine sensitizes Acinetobacter baumannii, other Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae) and a Gram-positive bacterium (Mycobacterium smegmatis) to aminoglycosides. Importantly, the combination of L-lysine with aminoglycosides killed clinically isolated multidrug-resistant...

Human infections with viruses of the genus Flavivirus, including dengue virus (DENV) and Zika virus (ZIKV), are of increasing global importance. Due to antibody dependent enhancement, secondary infection with one Flavivirus following primary infection with another {\it Flavivirus} can result in a significantly larger peak viral load with a much higher risk of severe disease. Although several mathematical models have been developed to quantify the virus dynamics in the primary and secondary infections of DENV,...

Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing K. pneumoniae (KPC-KP) have disseminated worldwide and emerged as major threats to public health. Of epidemiological significance, the international pandemic of KPC-KP is primarily associated with CG258 isolates and blaKPC-IncF plasmids. CRISPR-Cas system is an adaptive immune system that can hinder gene expansion driven by horizontal gene transfer. Because of blaKPC-IncF plasmids are favored by CG258 K. pneumoniae, it was of interest to examine the co-distribution of CRISPR and blaKPC-IncF plasmids...

Objectives Severe or critical COVID-19 is associated with intensive care unit admission, increased secondary infection rate, and would lead to significant worsened prognosis. Risks and characteristics relating to secondary infections in severe COVID-19 have not been described. Methods Severe and critical COVID-19 patients from Shanghai were included. We collected lower respiratory, urine, catheters, and blood samples according to clinical necessity and culture and mNGS were performed. Clinical and laboratory data were archived. Results We found...

In December 2019, Wuhan, China suffered a serious outbreak of a novel coronavirus infectious disease (COVID) caused by novel severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARS-CoV 2). To quickly identify the pathogen, we designed and screened primer sets, and established a sensitive and specific qRT-PCR assay for SARS-CoV 2; the lower limit of detection (LOD) was 15 (95% CI: 9.8–21) copies per reaction. We combined this qRT-PCR assay with an automatic integration system for nucleic acid...

Acinetobacter baumannii has become a major healthcare threat that causes nosocomial infections, especially in critically ill patients. The spread of carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (CRAB) strains has long been a clinical concern. It is important to study the epidemiology and virulence characteristics of different CRAB isolates in order to tailor infection prevention and antibiotic prescribing. In this study, a total of 71 CRAB isolates were collected in the hospital, and clinical characteristics of infections were analyzed....

Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-1-tam-10.1177_1758835920977117 for Low intratumor heterogeneity correlates with increased response to PD-1 blockade in renal cell carcinoma by Xia Ran, Jinyuan Xiao, Yi Zhang, Huajing Teng, Fang Cheng, Huiqian Chen, Kaifan Zhang and Zhongsheng Sun in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), autoimmune disease that is categorized via chronic inflammation manifestation, obesity, cardiovascular risk and even enhanced the mortality and affect the 0.3 and 1% of population worldwide. The current experimental study was scrutinize the anti-arthritic effect of β-sitosterol loaded solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN) against complete Fruend adjuvant (CFA)-induced arthritis via dual pathway. Double emulsion solvent displacement method was used for the preparation of β-sitosterol solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN). CFA was used to induce...

Sichuan Province is located at the transitional junction regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the low-altitude plains. It also serves as the corridor of Sino-Tibetan-speaking population migration and expansion since neolithic expansion of Proto-Tibeto-Burman populations from Middle/Upper Yellow River during Majiayao period (3300–2000 BC). However, the population structure and the corresponding genetic diversity of forensic-related markers in this region remain unclear. Thus, we genotyped 30 insertion-deletion (InDel) markers in 444 samples from four ethnic groups...

Circulating in China and 158 other countries and areas, the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak has caused devastating mortality and posed a great threat to public health. However, efforts to identify effectively supportive therapeutic drugs and treatments has been hampered by our limited understanding of host immune response for this fatal disease. To characterize the transcriptional signatures of host inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2 (HCoV-19) infection, we carried out transcriptome sequencing of the RNAs isolated from the bronchoalveolar...

Allopatric divergence is often initiated by geological uplift and restriction to sky-islands, climate oscillations, or river capture. However, it can be difficult to establish which mechanism was the most likely to generate the current phylogeographic structure of a species. Recently, genomic data in conjunction with a model testing framework have been applied to address this issue in animals. To test whether such an approach is also likely to be successful in plants we used population...

In December 2019, Wuhan, China suffered a serious outbreak of a novel coronavirus infectious disease (COVID) caused by novel severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARS-CoV 2). To quickly identify the pathogen, we designed and screened primer sets, and established a sensitive and specific qRT-PCR assay for SARS-CoV 2; the lower limit of detection (LOD) was 14.8 (95% CI: 9.8–21) copies per reaction. We combined this qRT-PCR assay with an automatic integration system for nucleic acid...

Objective: To evaluate the impact of new national drug pricing policy (NDPP) 2018 on the access to medicines in terms of prices, availability, and affordability. Design: Two cross-sectional surveys were undertaken before and after the launch of NDPP 2018, using a modified WHO/HAI methodology. Setting: Four districts of Lahore division, Pakistan. Participants: 16 public sector hospitals and 16 private sector retail pharmacies. Measures: The pre- and post-survey data on prices and availability of Lowest Price...

UXT (ubiquitously expressed prefoldin like chaperone), a small chaperone-like protein, is widely expressed in diverse human and mouse tissues and is more abundant in retina and kidney. However, the functional characterization of UXT at tissue level was largely unknown. Here, we reported that mice deficient in UXT exhibited salient features of retinal degenerative disease, similar to retinitis pigmentosa. Conditional knockout (CKO) of Uxt led to retinal degeneration and pigmentation in mice retina along with significant...

Acinetobacter baumannii has become a major healthcare threat that causes nosocomial infections, especially in critically ill patients. The spread of carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (CRAB) strains has long been a clinical concern. It is important to study the epidemiology and virulence characteristics of different CRAB isolates in order to tailor infection prevention and antibiotic prescribing. In this study, a total of 71 CRAB isolates were collected in the hospital, and clinical characteristics of infections were analyzed....

In males, aging is accompanied by decline in serum testosterone levels due to impairment of testicular Leydig cells. The polycomb protein BMI1 has recently been identified as an anti-aging factor. In our previous study, BMI1 null mice showed decreased serum testosterone and Leydig cell population, excessive oxidative stress and p16/p19 signaling activation. However, a cause-and-effect relationship between phenotypes and pathways was not investigated. Here, we used the rescue approach to study the role of oxidative...

To study whether ropivacaine inhibits the proliferation and migration of colon cancer cells through ITGB1 (Integrin beta-1). First, the effect of ropivacaine on cell proliferation and migration was detected by MTT and Transwell. DAPI staining, annexin V staining and Western blot were used to detect the expression of apoptosis-related proteins to investigate the effect of ropivacaine on cell apoptosis. Using bioinformatics software to predict the potential drug targets of ropivacaine. RT-PCR, Western blot and immunofluorescence...