The emerging COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection poses severe challenges to global public health. Serum antibody testing is becoming one of the critical methods for the diagnosis of COVID-19 patients. We investigated IgM and IgG responses against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) and spike (S) protein after symptom onset in the intensive care unit (ICU) and non-ICU patients. 130 blood samples from 38 COVID-19 patients were collected. The levels of IgM and IgG specific to N and...

Breast cancer remains a general-threat event in the health of women. Currently, increasing records indicate that long non-coding RNA maternally expressed 3 (MEG3) plays a central role in breast cancer. The current research focused on the function of MEG3 in paclitaxel (PTX)-resistance and human breast cancer growth. Levels of MEG3, microRNA (miR)-4513, and phenazine biosynthesis-like domain-containing protein (PBLD) were evaluated using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) or western blot assays. 3-(4.5-dimethylghiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium Bromide (MTT) assay...

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...

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...

p53 is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancers, with over half of all tumors harboring mutation at this locus. R248 and R249 (corresponding to porcine R241 and R242), are among the hotspot mutations frequently mutated in liver, lung, breast, and some other cancers. In this study, p53 gene was knocked out or point-edited (R241 and R242 were converted to 241W and 242S) in porcine fetal fibroblast (PFF) cells via CRISPR-Cas9 technique. High throughput...

Previous studies show that Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) are involved in the regulation of various human diseases. This study aimed to reveal how LncRNA CRNDE regulated vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) proliferation and apoptosis in abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). Here, we found CRNDE was down-regulated in AAA tissues and AngII-stimulated VSMCs. The overexpression of CRNDE promoted VSMCs proliferation and inhibited cell apoptosis. The interaction between CRNDE and Bcl-3 or Bcl-3 and Smad3 was verified. The...

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 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...

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a common cause of nosocomial diarrhea and can sometimes lead to pseudo-membranous colitis and toxic megacolon. We previously reported that the PCR ribotype 002 was a common C. difficile ribotype in Hong Kong that was associated with increased mortality. In this study, we assessed in vitro bacteriological characteristics and in vivo virulence of ribotype 002 compared to other common ribotypes, including ribotypes 012, 014 and 046. We observed significantly higher...

Previous studies show that Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) are involved in the regulation of various human diseases. This study aimed to reveal how LncRNA CRNDE regulated vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) proliferation and apoptosis in abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). Here, we found CRNDE was down-regulated in AAA tissues and AngII-stimulated VSMCs. The overexpression of CRNDE promoted VSMCs proliferation and inhibited cell apoptosis. The interaction between CRNDE and Bcl-3 or Bcl-3 and Smad3 was verified. The...

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...

Mitophagy, the elimination of damaged mitochondria through autophagy, promotes neuronal survival in cerebral ischemia. Previous studies found deficient mitophagy in ischemic neurons, but the mechanisms are still largely unknown. We determined that BNIP3L/NIX, a mitophagy receptor, was degraded by proteasomes, which led to mitophagy deficiency in both ischemic neurons and brains. BNIP3L exists as a monomer and homodimer in mammalian cells, but the effects of homodimer and monomer on mitophagy are unclear. Site-specific mutations in...

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...

Many modern large-scale longitudinal neuroimaging studies, such as the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study, have collected/are collecting asynchronous scalar and functional variables that are measured at distinct time points. The analyses of temporally asynchronous functional and scalar variables pose major technical challenges to many existing statistical approaches. We propose a class of generalized functional partial-linear varying-coefficient models to appropriately deal with these challenges through introducing both scalar and functional coefficients of interest and using...

Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the main causes of the high death rate in the world. But the molecular mechanisms of GC carcinogenesis remain little known. This study aimed to identify novel promising biomarkers of GC and reveal its potential molecular mechanisms by integrating bioinformatics analysis. We screened the overlapped differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of TCGA and several GEO datasets. Among these DEGs, we used protein-protein interactions network analysis to recognize the hub genes....

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...

Iron metabolism is involved in numerous physiological processes such as erythropoiesis, oxidative metabolism. However, the in vivo physiological functions of the iron metabolism-related gene Hfe in immune response during viral infection remain poorly understood. Here, we identified 5 iron metabolism-associated genes specifically affected during RNA virus infection by a high-throughput assay and further found that HFE was a key negative regulator of RIG-I-like receptors (RLR)-mediated type I interferons (IFNs) signaling. RNA virus infection inhibited the...

Human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63) is primarily associated with common cold in children, elderly and immunocompromised individuals. Outbreaks caused by HCoV-NL63 are rare. Here we report a cluster of HCoV-NL63 cases with severe lower respiratory tract infection that arose in Guangzhou, China, in 2018. Twenty-three hospitalized children were confirmed to be HCoV-NL63 positive, and most of whom were hospitalized with severe pneumonia or acute bronchitis. Whole genomes of HCoV-NL63 were obtained using next-generation sequencing. Phylogenetic and...

Objectives: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a most debilitating traumatic injury, and cytotherapy is a promising alternative treatment strategy. Here we investigated the effect and mechanism of adipose-derived stem/stromal cells (ASCs) with overexpressing brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT3) (BDNF-NT3) in combination with silk fibroin/chitosan scaffold (SFCS) in SCI. Methods: Female Sprague-Dawley rats were used as an SCI model. SFCS,SFCS and ASCs, or ASCs overexpressing NT3, BDNF, and BDNF-NT3 were implanted into SCI rats....

Breast cancer remains a general-threat event in the health of women. Currently, increasing records indicate that long non-coding RNA maternally expressed 3 (MEG3) plays a central role in breast cancer. The current research focused on the function of MEG3 in paclitaxel (PTX)-resistance and human breast cancer growth. Levels of MEG3, microRNA (miR)-4513, and phenazine biosynthesis-like domain-containing protein (PBLD) were evaluated using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) or western blot assays. 3-(4.5-dimethylghiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium Bromide (MTT) assay...

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,...

Candida albicans is a common fungal pathogen in humans that colonizes the skin and mucosal surfaces of the majority healthy individuals. How C. albicans disseminates into the bloodstream and causes life-threatening systemic infections in immunocompromised patients remains unclear. Plasminogen system activation can degrade a variety of structural proteins in vivo and is involved in several homeostatic processes. Here, for the first time, we characterized that C. albicans could capture and “subvert” host plasminogen to invade...

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a common cause of nosocomial diarrhea and can sometimes lead to pseudo-membranous colitis and toxic megacolon. We previously reported that the PCR ribotype 002 was a common C. difficile ribotype in Hong Kong that was associated with increased mortality. In this study, we assessed in vitro bacteriological characteristics and in vivo virulence of ribotype 002 compared to other common ribotypes, including ribotypes 012, 014 and 046. We observed significantly higher...

Brucellosis caused by Brucella melitensis is considered to be one of the most important zoonotic diseases in China. In this study, Conventional bio-typing, MLVA (multiple locus variable-number tandem repeat analysis), and WGS (whole-genome sequencing)-SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) were used to study the genetic similarity of B. melitensis in northern and southern China and analyze its relationship with worldwide lineages. Currently, the distribution of species/biovars of B. melitensis has obviously changed, and B. melitensis has become...

Many modern large-scale longitudinal neuroimaging studies, such as the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study, have collected/are collecting asynchronous scalar and functional variables that are measured at distinct time points. The analyses of temporally asynchronous functional and scalar variables pose major technical challenges to many existing statistical approaches. We propose a class of generalized functional partial-linear varying-coefficient models to appropriately deal with these challenges through introducing both scalar and functional coefficients of interest and using...