The expression of Sox4 in female lung cancer patients and its clinical significance

Objective:To investigate the expression level of sex-determining region Y-related high mobility group box 4(Sox4)in female lung cancer patients and its clinical significance.Methods:213cases of female lung cancer patients who presented in the third affiliated hospital of Kunming medical university were selected for this study.Patients were performed radical surgery of lung cancer;the tumor and adjacent normal tissues were collected.The expression of Sox4 were determined by real-time PCR and immunohistochemical staining.The correlation between Sox4 expression and clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed.Results:The mRNA level of Sox4 was significantly higher in tumor tissues than that in adjacent normal tissues(P <0.05).The positive expression rate of SOX4 in carcinoma tissues was 54.46%,which was significantly higher than that in adjacent normal tissues(23.47%)(P <0.05).The positive expression rate of Sox4 in stageⅢ was 89.47%,which was significantly higher than that in stageⅠ-Ⅱ(P <0.05).The positive expression rate of SOX4 in lung cancer patients with lymph node metastasis was 90.91%,which was significantly higher than that in patients without lymph node metastasis(P <0.05).The positive expression rates of Sox4 in low,middle and high differentiation tissues were 69.05%,32.88% and 23.21% respectively,suggesting that the expression of Sox4 in female lung cancer tissues decreased with the increase of pathological differentiation grades.Conclusion:In female lung cancer,SOX4expression was significantly higher in tumor tissue than that of adjacent normal tissues and was correlated with clinical stage,lymph node metastasis and pathological differentiation.Sox4 expression detection may help determine the prognosis of women with lung cancer and provide a theoretical basis for molecular targeted therapy of lung cancer in women.

Coherent optical adaptive technique improves the spatial resolution of STED microscopy in thick samples

Stimulated emission depletion(STED) microscopy is one of far-field optical microscopy techniques that can provide sub-diffraction spatial resolution. The spatial resolution of the STED microscopy is determined by the specially engineered beam profile of the depletion beam and its power. However, the beam profile of the depletion beam may be distorted due to aberrations of optical systems and inhomogeneity of a specimen's optical properties, resulting in a compromised spatial resolution. The situation gets deteriorated when thick samples are imaged. In the worst case, the severe distortion of the depletion beam profile may cause complete loss of the superresolution effect no matter how much depletion power is applied to specimens. Previously several adaptive optics approaches have been explored to compensate aberrations of systems and specimens. However, it is difficult to correct the complicated high-order optical aberrations of specimens. In this report, we demonstrate that the complicated distorted wavefront from a thick phantom sample can be measured by using the coherent optical adaptive technique. The full correction can effectively maintain and improve spatial resolution in imaging thick samples.

Digital holographic microscopy with phase-shift-free structured illumination

When structured illumination is used in digital holographic microscopy(DHM),each direction of the illumination fringe is required to be shifted at least three times to perform the phase-shifting reconstruction.In this paper,we propose a scheme for spatial resolution enhancement of DHM by using the structured illumination but without phase shifting.The structured illuminations of different directions,which are generated by a spatial light modulator,illuminate the sample sequentially in the object plane.The formed object waves interfere with a reference wave in an off-axis configuration,and a CCD camera records the generated hologram.After the object waves are reconstructed numerically,a synthetic aperture is performed by an iterative algorithm to enhance the spatial resolution.The resolution improvement of the proposed method is proved and demonstrated by both simulation and experiment.

Reconstitution of biosynthetic pathway for mushroom-derived cyathane diterpenes in yeast and generation of new“non-natural”analogues

Mushroom-derived cyathane-type diterpenes possess unusual chemical skeleton and diverse bioactivities.To efficiently supply bioactive cyathanes for deep studies and explore their structural diversity,de novo synthesis of cyathane diterpenes in a geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae is investigated.Aided by homologous analyses,one new unclustered FAD-dependent oxidase EriM accounting for the formation of allyl aldehyde and three new NADP(H)-dependent reductases in the biosynthesis of cyathanes are identified and elucidated.By combinatorial biosynthetic strategy,S.cerevisiae strains generating twenty-two cyathane-type diterpenes,including seven"unnatural"cyathane xylosides(12,13,14a,14b,19,20,and 22)are established.Compounds 12-14,19,and 20 show significant neurotrophic effects on PC 12 cells in the dose of 6.3-25.0μmol/L.These studies provide new insights into the divergent biosynthesis of mushroom-originated cyathanes and a straightforward approach to produce bioactive cyathane-type diterpenes.

Role of magpie in bird community formation in secondary forest

We analyzed a bird community in a secondary forest and the results show that the magpie was one of the key groups in the secondary forest.The key group is identified based on the nests used by other birds at a rate of 25%-40.17%.The size of the community is different and the number of these key groups is not certain.