Henan Normal University

About: Henan Normal University is a education organization based out in Xinxiang, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Catalysis & Ionic liquid. The organization has 10863 authors who have published 11077 publications receiving 166773 citations.

Identification of Key Pathways and Genes in the Dynamic Progression of HCC Based on WGCNA

Abstract: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a devastating disease worldwide. Though many efforts have been made to elucidate the process of HCC, its molecular mechanisms of development remain elusive due to its complexity. To explore the stepwise carcinogenic process from pre-neoplastic lesions to the end stage of HCC, we employed weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) which has been proved to be an effective method in many diseases to detect co-expressed modules and hub genes using eight pathological stages including normal, cirrhosis without HCC, cirrhosis, low-grade dysplastic, high-grade dysplastic, very early and early, advanced HCC and very advanced HCC. Among the eight consecutive pathological stages, five representative modules are selected to perform canonical pathway enrichment and upstream regulator analysis by using ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA) software. We found that cell cycle related biological processes were activated at four neoplastic stages, and the degree of activation of the cell cycle corresponded to the deterioration degree of HCC. The orange and yellow modules enriched in energy metabolism, especially oxidative metabolism, and the expression value of the genes decreased only at four neoplastic stages. The brown module, enriched in protein ubiquitination and ephrin receptor signaling pathways, correlated mainly with the very early stage of HCC. The darkred module, enriched in hepatic fibrosis/hepatic stellate cell activation, correlated with the cirrhotic stage only. The high degree hub genes were identified based on the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and were verified by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. The novel five high degree hub genes signature that was identified in our study may shed light on future prognostic and therapeutic approaches. Our study brings a new perspective to the understanding of the key pathways and genes in the dynamic changes of HCC progression. These findings shed light on further investigations

Volumetric and Viscosity Properties of Monosaccharides in Aqueous Amino Acid Solutions at 298.15 K

Abstract: Apparent molar volumes VΦ,S and viscosity B-coefficients for d-(+)-glucose, d-(+)-galactose, d-(+)-xylose, and d-(−)-ribose in aqueous amino acid (glycine or l-alanine) solutions have been determined respectively from density and viscosity measurements at 298.15 K. Infinite-dilution apparent molar volumes for the saccharides in aqueous glycine or l-alanine solutions have been evaluated, together with the standard transfer volumes Δt of the saccharides from water to aqueous amino acid solutions. It is shown that values of transfer volumes and viscosity B-coefficients are positive and increase with increasing amino acid contents. Volumetric parameters indicating the interactions of saccharides with amino acids in water have been obtained from the transfer volumes of the saccharides. The interactions between saccharides and amino acids are discussed in terms of the structural interaction model and the stereo structure of monosaccharide molecules.

Giant nonlinearity via breaking parity-time symmetry: A route to low-threshold phonon diodes

Abstract: Nonreciprocal devices that permit wave transmission in only one direction are indispensible in many fields of science including, e.g., electronics, optics, acoustics, and thermodynamics. Manipulating phonons using such nonreciprocal devices may have a range of applications such as phonon diodes, transistors, switches, etc. One way of achieving nonreciprocal phononic devices is to use materials with strong nonlinear response to phonons. However, it is not easy to obtain the required strong mechanical nonlinearity, especially for few-phonon situations. Here we present a general mechanism to amplify nonlinearity using parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$)-symmetric structures, and show that an on-chip microscale phonon diode can be fabricated using a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric mechanical system, in which a lossy mechanical resonator with very weak mechanical nonlinearity is coupled to a mechanical resonator with mechanical gain but no mechanical nonlinearity. When this coupled system transits from the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric regime to the broken-$\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric regime, the mechanical nonlinearity is transferred from the lossy resonator to the one with gain, and the effective nonlinearity of the system is significantly enhanced. This enhanced mechanical nonlinearity is almost lossless because of the gain-loss balance induced by the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric structure. Such an enhanced lossless mechanical nonlinearity is then used to control the direction of phonon propagation, and can greatly decrease (by over three orders of magnitude) the threshold of the input-field intensity necessary to observe the unidirectional phonon transport. We propose an experimentally realizable lossless low-threshold phonon diode of this type. Our study opens up perspectives for constructing on-chip few-phonon devices and hybrid phonon-photon components.