Identification of potential oxidative stress biomarkers for spinal cord injury in erythrocytes using mass spectrometry

Oxidative stress is a hallmark of secondary injury associated with spinal cord injury.Identifying stable and specific oxidative biomarkers is of important significance for studying spinal cord injury-associated secondary injury.Mature erythrocytes do not contain nuclei and mitochondria and cannot be transcribed and translated.Therefore, mature erythrocytes are highly sensitive to oxidative stress and may become a valuable biomarker.In the present study, we revealed the proteome dynamics of protein expression in erythrocytes of beagle dogs in the acute and subacute phases of spinal cord injury using mass spectrometry-based approaches.We found 26 proteins that were differentially expressed in the acute(0–3 days) and subacute(7–21 days) phases of spinal cord injury.Bioinformatics analysis revealed that these differentially expressed proteins were involved in glutathione metabolism, lipid metabolism, and pentose phosphate and other oxidative stress pathways.Western blot assays validated the differential expression of glutathione synthetase, transaldolase, and myeloperoxidase.This result was consistent with mass spectrometry results, suggesting that erythrocytes can be used as a novel sample source of biological markers of oxidative stress in spinal cord injury.Glutathione synthetase, transaldolase, and myeloperoxidase sourced from erythrocytes are potential biomarkers of oxidative stress after spinal cord injury.This study was approved by the Experimental Animal Centre of Ningxia Medical University, China(approval No.2017-073) on February 13, 2017.

Gene and protein expression profiles of olfactory ensheathing cells from olfactory bulb versus olfactory mucosa

Olfactory ensheathing cells(OECs) from the olfactory bulb(OB) and the olfactory mucosa(OM) have the capacity to repair nerve injury. However, the difference in the therapeutic effect between OB-derived OECs and OM-derived OECs remains unclear. In this study, we extracted OECs from OB and OM and compared the gene and protein expression profiles of the cells using transcriptomics and non-quantitative proteomics techniques. The results revealed that both OB-derived OECs and OM-derived OECs highly expressed genes and proteins that regulate cell growth, proliferation, apoptosis and vascular endothelial cell regeneration. The differentially expressed genes and proteins of OB-derived OECs play a key role in regulation of nerve regeneration and axon regeneration and extension, transmission of nerve impulses and response to axon injury. The differentially expressed genes and proteins of OM-derived OECs mainly participate in the positive regulation of inflammatory response, defense response, cytokine binding, cell migration and wound healing. These findings suggest that differentially expressed genes and proteins may explain why OB-derived OECs and OM-derived OECs exhibit different therapeutic roles. This study was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of the General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University(approval No. 2017-073) on February 13, 2017.

Special Expression of Thy-1 in Different Malignant Tumors

Objective： To investigate the expression status of Thy-1 in malignant cancerous tissues and to evaluate whether Thy-1 could be a potential tumor marker. Methods： Immunohistochemistry method was used to examine Thy-1 expressions in different malignant tumor tissues. We used a monoclonal antibody specific for Thy-1 and the indirect Catalysis Signal Amplification method. With the help of tissue microarray （TMA）, we examined expression the status of Thy-1 in 1451 different types of malignant tumor tissues, 144 normal tissues and benign lesions. Results： All the malignant tumor cells were grouped as one group （malignant cells group） and normal or benign tumor tissue cells as another group （normal cells group）. Among the entire 1451 malignant cases group, positive Thy-1 expression with diffuse and strong staining was observed in 734 （734/1451; 50.59%） cases. In the benign cases only 6 chronic cervicitis cases showed weak staining for Thy-1. All the normal tissue showed negative staining. One-Way ANVOA analysis showed F value between these two groups was 147.229 （P〈0.0001）. Conclusion： A significantly stronger expression of Thy-1 in malignant tumors was observed. Special overexpression of Thy-1 in malignant tumors suggests that Thy-1 might be a potential novel tumor marker with respect to cancer progression. Chronic cervicitis has some relationship with cervix carcinoma. When it develops into atypical hyperplasia, it will be a precancerous lesion for cervix carcinoma. In this research we found weak staining for Thy-1 in chronic cervicitis lesion, so Thy-1 may play a crucial role in carcinogenesis for cervix carcinoma. The research about the relationship between Thy-1 expressions in cancer cells and in precancerous lesion will provide some clues to understand the mechanism for carcinogenesis process.

High-dimensional entanglement generation based on a Pancharatnam–Berry phase metasurface

High-dimensional entanglement is of great importance in quantum communications and can be realized by encoding information on multiple degrees of freedom(Do Fs)of the photons.Conventionally,the realization of such high-dimensional entanglement involves different combinations of bulky optical elements.In this work,we present the use of a single dielectric metasurface to generate high-dimensional entanglement by modulating multi-Do Fs of photons.By sending one of the polarization-entangled photons to interact with the metasurface,we encode path,spin angular momentum,and orbital angular momentum information to the original state.We achieve a four-qubit quantum state in the experiment.To verify it,we experimentally demonstrate the nonlocal correlations between the two photons by recording the correlated images,and we also perform a quantum state tomography measurement.This scheme can be applied to on-chip quantum state manipulation,which is promising in quantum communication with integrated components.