Critical roles of sirtuin 1 in vascular aging and abdominal aortic aneurysm

With the support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and National Science and Technology Support Project,the research team led by Prof.Liu Depei(刘德培)at the State Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Biology,Institute of Basic Medical Sciences,Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College,discovered critical roles of sirtuin 1(SIRT1)in the vascular smooth

Unintended targeting of Dmp1-Cre reveals a critical role for Bmpr1a signaling in the gastrointestinal mesenchyme of adult mice

Cre/loxP technology has been widely used to study cell type-specific functions of genes. Proper interpretation of such data critically depends on a clear understanding of the tissue specificity of Cre expression. The Dmpl- Cre mouse, expressing Cre from a 14-kb DNA fragment of the mouse Dmpl gene, has become a common tool for studying gene function in osteocytes, but the presumed cell specificity is yet to be fully established. By using the Ai9 reporter line that expresses a red fluorescent protein upon Cre recombination, we find that in 2-month-old mice, Dmpl-Cre targets not only osteocytes within the bone matrix but also osteoblasts on the bone surface and preosteoblasts at the metaphyseal chondro-osseous junction. In the bone marrow, Cre activity is evident in certain stromal cells adjacent to the blood vessels, but not in adipocytes. Outside the skeleton, Dmpl-Cre marks not only the skeletal muscle fibers, certain cells in the cerebellum and the hindbrain but also gastric and intestinal mesenchymal cells that express Pdgfra. Confirming the utility of Dmpl-Cre in the gastrointestinal mesenchyme, deletion of Bmprla with Dmpl-Cre causes numerous large polyps along the gastrointestinal tract, consistent with prior work involving inhibition of BMP signaling. Thus, caution needs to be exercised when using Dmpl-Cre because it targets not only the osteoblast lineage at an earlier stage than previously appreciated, but also a number of non-skeletal cell types.

Role of Interatomic Force to Critical Resolved Shear Stress of Single Crystals

Experimental results of the temperature dependence of critical resolved. shear stresses (CRSS)of Mo, Fe, Al and Mg single crystals are shown. Associating reports in recent years, we point out that the approximate exponential relationship between CRSS and the absolute temperatureat least in the region of the steep temperature dependence range of many materials is more common, even for bcc, fcc, and hcp single crystals. polycrystals and other covalent crystals,provided that the slip plane and slip direction are kept the same. Successful explanation with atomic force law shows that the interatomic forces (electronic structure) play a decisive role in determining the temperature dependence of yield stresses for a large number of materials.

Critical role of immunogenic cell death in cancer therapy

In traditional cancer therapy, including chemo and radiation therapy, the goal is always to kill as much cancer cells as possible. However, the truth is that it is difficult to kill 100% of the cancer cells for these therapies and the remaining cells often leads to relapse. So the million-dollar question is, how to eliminate the majority of the remaining cancer cells so that the disease can be manageable in a clinical setting. Currently the best approach that is attracting much attention is cancer immune therapy and excit- ing developments in this field have led to cure in some cases that is unimaginable before [1]. There are two major parts to cancer immune therapy that need to work together to make the therapy successful. One is on the reversal of immune suppressive microen- vironment in cancer to allow the immune cells to target the tumor.