The future of artificial hibernation medicine:protection of nerves and organs after spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury is a serious disease of the central nervous system involving irreversible nerve injury and various organ system injuries.At present,no effective clinical treatment exists.As one of the artificial hibernation techniques,mild hypothermia has preliminarily confirmed its clinical effect on spinal cord injury.However,its technical defects and barriers,along with serious clinical side effects,restrict its clinical application for spinal cord injury.Artificial hibernation is a futureoriented disruptive technology for human life support.It involves endogenous hibernation inducers and hibernation-related central neuromodulation that activate particular neurons,reduce the central constant temperature setting point,disrupt the normal constant body temperature,make the body adapt"to the external cold environment,and reduce the physiological resistance to cold stimulation.Thus,studying the artificial hibernation mechanism may help develop new treatment strategies more suitable for clinical use than the cooling method of mild hypothermia technology.This review introduces artificial hibernation technologies,including mild hypothermia technology,hibernation inducers,and hibernation-related central neuromodulation technology.It summarizes the relevant research on hypothermia and hibernation for organ and nerve protection.These studies show that artificial hibernation technologies have therapeutic significance on nerve injury after spinal co rd injury through inflammatory inhibition,immunosuppression,oxidative defense,and possible central protection.It also promotes the repair and protection of res pirato ry and digestive,cardiovascular,locomoto r,urinary,and endocrine systems.This review provides new insights for the clinical treatment of nerve and multiple organ protection after spinal cord injury thanks to artificial hibernation.At present,artificial hibernation technology is not mature,and research fa ces various challenges.Neve rtheless,the effort is wo rthwhile for the future development of medicine.

Jasmonic acid carboxyl methyltransferase regulates development and herbivory-induced defense response in rice

Jasmonic acid（JA） and related metabolites play a key role in plant defense and growth. JA carboxyl methyltransferase（JMT） may be involved in plant defense and development by methylating JA to methyl jasmonate（Me JA） and thus influencing the concentrations of JA and related metabolites. However, no JMT gene has been well characterized in monocotyledon defense and development at the molecular level. After we cloned a rice JMT gene,Os JMT1, whose encoding protein was localized in the cytosol, we found that the recombinant Os JMT1 protein catalyzed JA to Me JA. Os JMT1 is up-regulated in response to infestation with the brown planthopper（BPH; Nilaparvata lugens）. Plants in which Os JMT1 had been overexpressed（oeJMT plants） showed reduced height and yield. These oe-JMT plants also exhibited increased Me JA levels but reduced levels of herbivore-induced JA and jasmonoyl-isoleucine（JAIle）. The oe-JMT plants were more attractive to BPH female adults but showed increased resistance to BPH nymphs,probably owing to the different responses of BPH female adults and nymphs to the changes in levels of H_2O_2 and Me JA in oe-JMT plants. These results indicate that Os JMT1,by altering levels of JA and related metabolites, plays a role in regulating plant development and herbivore-induced defense responses in rice.

STI PCR: An efficient method for amplification and de novo synthesis of long DNA sequences

Despite continuous improvements,it is difficult to efficiently amplify large sequences from complex templates using current PCR methods.Here,we developed a suppression thermo-interlaced(STI)PCR method for the efficient and specific amplification of long DNA sequences from genomes and synthetic DNA pools.This method uses site-specific primers containing a common 50 tag to generate a stem-loop structure,thereby repressing the amplification of smaller non-specific products through PCR suppression(PS).However,large target products are less affected by PS and show enhanced amplification when the competitive amplification of non-specific products is suppressed.Furthermore,this method uses nested thermointerlaced cycling with varied temperatures to optimize strand extension of long sequences with an uneven GC distribution.The combination of these two factors in STI PCR produces a multiplier effect,markedly increasing specificity and amplification capacity.We also developed a webtool,calGC,for analyzing the GC distribution of target DNA sequences and selecting suitable thermo-cycling programs for STI PCR.Using this method,we stably amplified very long genomic fragments(up to 38 kb)from plants and human and greatly increased the length of de novo DNA synthesis,which has many applications such as cloning,expression,and targeted genomic sequencing.Our method greatly extends PCR capacity and has great potential for use in biological fields.

A serum microRNA signature for enhanced selection of people for lung cancer screening

Dear editor,Lung cancer(LC)is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality globally[1].Earlier detection by screening can substantially reduce LC mortality[2,3],but should be focused on those at highest risk[4].Risk stratification for LC screening,which is mostly based on smoking history[5],is far from perfect[6].Therefore,additional criteria to better define those at highest risk of LC are needed to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of LC screening.Besides risk prediction models incorporating classical LC risk factors[7].