Association of CASP9,CASP10 gene polymorphisms and tea drinking with colorectal cancer risk in the Han Chinese population

The initiators caspase-9 （CASP9） and caspase-10 （CASPIO） are two key controllers of apoptosis and play important roles in carcinogenesis. This study aims to explore the association between CASPs gene polymorphisms and colorectal cancer （CRC） susceptibility in a population-based study. A two-stage designed population-based case-control study was carried out, including a testing set with 300 cases and 296 controls and a validation set with 206 cases and 845 controls. A total of eight tag selected single nucleotide polymorphisms （SNPs） in CASP9 and CASPIO were chosen based on HapMap and the National Center of Biotechnology Information （NCBI） datasets and genotyped by restriction fragment length polymorphism （RFLP） assay. Multivariate logistic regression models were applied to evaluate the association of SNPs with CRC risk. In the first stage, from eight tag SNPs, three polymorphisms rs4646077 （odds ratio （OR）AA＋AG： 0.654, 95% confidence interval （CI）： 0.406-1.055; P=0.082）, rs4233532 （ORcc： 1.667, 95% CI： 0.967-2.876; Oacm： 1.435, 95% CI： 0.998-2.063; P=0.077）, and rs2881930 （ORcc： 0.263, 95% CI： 0.095-0.728, P=0.036） showed possible association with CRC risk. However, none of the three SNPs, rs4646077 （ORAA＋AG： 1.233, 95% CI： 0.903-1.683）, rs4233532 （ORcc： 0.892, 95% CI： 0.640-1.243; ORcT： 1.134, 95% CI： 0.897-1.433）, and rs2881930 （ORcc： 1.096, 95% CI： 0.620-1.938; ORcT： 1.009, 95% CI： 0.801-1.271）, remained significant with CRC risk in the validation set, even after stratification for different tumor locations （colon or rectum）. In addition, never tea drinking was associated with a significantly increased risk of CRC in testing set together with validation set （OR： 1.755, 95% CI： 1.319-2.334）. Our results found that polymorphisms of CASP9 and CASPIO genes may not contribute to CRC risk in Chinese population and thereby the large-scale case-control studies might be in consideration. In addition, tea drinking was a protective factor for CRC.

Localization of five-dimensional Elko spinors on dS/AdS thick branes

Owing to the special structure of a five-dimensional Elko spinor,its localization on a brane with codimension one becomes completely different from that of a Dirac spinor.By introducing the coupling between the Elko spinor and the scalar field that can generate the brane,we have two types of localization mechanism for the five-dimensional Elko spinor zero mode on a brane.One is the Yukawa-type coupling,and the other is the non-minimal coupling.In this study,we investigate the localization of the Elko zero mode on de Sitter and Anti-de Sitter thick branes with the two localization mechanisms,respectively.The results show that both the mechanisms can achieve localization.The forms of the scalar coupling function in both localization mechanisms have similar properties,and they play a similar role in localization.