Endothelial progenitor cells in peripheral blood may serve as a biological marker to predict severe acute pancreatitis

AIM To investigate the significance of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in predicting severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). METHODS We recruited 71 patients with acute pancreatitis (AP) and excluded 11 of them; finally, cases of mild acute pancreatitis (MAP) (n = 30) and SAP (n = 30), and healthy volunteers (n = 20) were internalized to investigate levels of EPCs, C-reactive protein (CRP), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), fibrinogen (FIB) and white blood cells (WBC) in peripheral blood. RESULTS The levels of TNF-alpha, WBC, FIB and CRP were higher both in SAP and MAP cases than in healthy volunteers (P < 0.05, all). Interestingly, the level of EPCs was higher in SAP than MAP (1.63% +/- 1.47% vs 6.61% +/- 4.28%, P < 0.01), but there was no significant difference between the MAP cases and healthy volunteers (1.63% +/- 1.47% vs 0.55% +/- 0.54%, P > 0.05). Receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) showed that EPCs, TNF-alpha, CRP and FIB were significantly associated with SAP, especially EPCs and CRP were optimal predictive markers of SAP. When the cut-off point for EPCs and CRP were 2.26% and 5.94 mg/dL, the sensitivities were 90.0% and 73.3%, and the specificities were 83.3% and 96.7%. Although, CRP had the highest specificity, and EPCs had the highest sensitivity and highest area under the curve value (0.93). CONCLUSION Data suggest that EPCs may be a new biological marker in predicting SAP.

A recessive gene controlling male sterility sensitive to short daylength/low temperature in wheat(Triticum aestivum L.)

Utilization of a two-line breeding system via photoperiod-thermo sensitive male sterility has a great potential for hybrid production in wheat （Triticum aestivum L.）. 337S is a novel wheat male sterile line sensitive to both short daylength/Iow temperature and long daylength/high temperature. Five F2 populations derived from the crosses between 337S and five common wheat varieties were developed for genetic analysis. All Fl＇s were highly fertile while segregation occurred in the F2 populations with a ratio of 3 fertile：l sterile under short daylength/Iow temperature. It is shown that male sterility in 337S was controlled by a single recessive gene, temporarily designated as wptms3. Bulked segregant analysis （BSA） coupled with simple sequence repeat （SSR） markers was applied to map the sterile gene using one mapping population. The wptms3 gene was mapped to chromosome arm 1BS and flanked byXgwm413 and Xgwm182 at a genetic distance of 3.2 and 23.5 cM, respectively. The accuracy and efficiency of marker-assisted selection were evaluated and proved essential for identifying homozygous recessive male sterile genotypes of the wptms3 gene in F2 generation.