Project description:Plant cyclophilins are widely involved in a variety of abiotic stress regulation processes. Thirty cyclophilin members were identified from apple and their patterns of response to abiotic stress were examined. Apple seedlings with consistent growth were selected, cultivated under drought stress conditions simulated by PEG6000, sampled according to different time periods, and quickly frozen in liquid nitrogen.Total RNAs of apple plantlets were isolated using an RNA extraction kit (Tiangen, Beijing, China).
Project description:Background: In December 2019, an outbreak of coronavirus disease (later named as COVID-19) was identified in Wuhan, China and, later on, detected in other parts of China. Our aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of the evolution of interventions and self-protection measures, estimate the risk of partial lifting control measures and predict the epidemic trend of the virus in the mainland of China excluding Hubei province based on the published data and a novel mathematical model.
Methods: A novel COVID-19 transmission dynamic model incorporating the intervention measures implemented in China is proposed. COVID-19 daily data of the mainland of China excluding Hubei province, including the cumulative confirmed cases, the cumulative deaths, newly confirmed cases and the cumulative recovered cases between 20 January and 3 March 2020, were archived from the National Health Commission of China (NHCC). We parameterize the model by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and estimate the control reproduction number (Rc), as well as the effective daily reproduction ratio- Re(t), of the disease transmission in the mainland of China excluding Hubei province.
Results: The estimation outcomes indicate that Rc is 3.36 (95% CI: 3.20-3.64) and Re(t) has dropped below 1 since 31 January 2020, which implies that the containment strategies implemented by the Chinese government in the mainland of China are indeed effective and magnificently suppressed COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, our results show that relieving personal protection too early may lead to a prolonged disease transmission period and more people would be infected, and may even cause a second wave of epidemic or outbreaks. By calculating the effective reproduction ratio, we prove that the contact rate should be kept at least less than 30% of the normal level by April, 2020.
Conclusions: To ensure the pandemic ending rapidly, it is necessary to maintain the current integrated restrict interventions and self-protection measures, including travel restriction, quarantine of entry, contact tracing followed by quarantine and isolation and reduction of contact, like wearing masks, keeping social distance, etc. People should be fully aware of the real-time epidemic situation and keep sufficient personal protection until April. If all the above conditions are met, the outbreak is expected to be ended by April in the mainland of China apart from Hubei province.
Project description:Gastric cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors. Asia has a high incidence of gastric cancer globally. South Korea, Mongolia, Japan and China are the four countries with the highest incidence of gastric cancer in the world. Gansu province in China has the estimated age-standardized incidence rates and mortality rates by Chinese standard population of 62.34/100,000 and 36.94/100,000, respectively, in 2012, which are much higher than the average level of China (22.06/100,000 and 15.16/100,000) in the same year. As a high incidence area of gastric cancer in China, Wuwei city in Gansu province has the prevalence of gastric cancer almost 5 times higher than the average level nationwide. In this study, the cancer tissues and matched adjacent normal mucosa tissues of 5 patients with early gastric cancers who were treated with ESD in Gansu Wuwei Tumor Hospital and the First Hospital of Lanzhou University were collected. All of the patients are from Gansu, China. MicroRNA array was used to find the differences in microRNAs expression profile between the early gastric cancer tissues and the para-cancer normal tissues. It is expected to explore the reasons of the abnormal high incidence of gastric cancer in Gansu Province, China, from the aspect of microRNAs expression profile characteristics.
Project description:Streptococcus suis is an important zoonosis pathogen that causes significant economic losses worldwide characterized by meningitis, septicaemia, arthritis, bronchopneumonia endocarditis. Streptcoccus suis 2 strain SC19 was isolated in Sichuan province in China, during the outbreak in 2005. Septicemia is most popular symptoms for SC19 infection, and mortality is high. We used human acute monocytic leukemia cell line (THP-1) infected SC19 to analysis the pathomechanism of septicemia in SS2 infection.
Project description:Neural Tube Defects (NTDs) are serious health problems of infants, accounting for large proportion of live birth defects in infants and miscarriage in women worldwide. Although some epidemiologic studies suggest both genetic and environmental factors were involved in the progression of the diseases, the etiologies of NTDs are not well understood at present. The objective of our study was to generate and to compare mRNA profiles of NTDs with those of normal controls in the 2nd trimesters of pregnancy. Illumina microarray chips (beadarrays) were utilized to identify the altered mRNA transcripts in the organ samples recruited from Luliang Prefecture in Shanxi Province, China, which has the highest occurrence of NTDs in world. The beadarrays identified 101 un-regulated and 194 down-regulated mRNA transcripts in the NTDs compared with the controls in the spinal cord. A number of genes in the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway were down-regulated. In particular, SIRT2, a key regulator of cholesterol biosynthesis, was significantly down-regulated in NTD samples. Our findings provide evidences that, the decrease of cholesterol biosynthesis in the spinal cord of NTD may affect the neural tube closure in the affected fetuses.
Project description:Five healthy Laoshan dairy goats (four years old, third lactation) from Qingdao Laoshan dairy goat primary farm (Shandong Province, China) were used. The mammary gland samples were collected surgically after general anaesthesia using Xylazine Hydrochloride injection solution (Huamu Animal Health Products Co., Ltd. China) at corresponding lactation stage, including early, peak and late lactations.
Project description:Shigui Ruan. Modeling the transmission dynamics and control of rabies in China. Mathematical Biosciences 286 (2017).
Human rabies was first recorded in ancient China in about 556 BC and is still one of the major public-health problems in China. From 1950 to 2015, 130,494 human rabies cases were reported in Mainland China with an average of 1977 cases per year. It is estimated that 95% of these human rabies cases are due to dog bites. The purpose of this article is to provide a review about the models, results, and simulations that we have obtained recently on studying the transmission of rabies in China. We first construct a basic susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered (SEIR) type model for the spread of rabies virus among dogs and from dogs to humans and use the model to simulate the human rabies data in China from 1996 to 2010. Then we modify the basic model by including both domestic and stray dogs and apply the model to simulate the human rabies data from Guangdong Province, China. To study the seasonality of rabies, in Section 4 we further propose a SEIR model with periodic transmission rates and employ the model to simulate the monthly data of human rabies cases reported by the Chinese Ministry of Health from January 2004 to December 2010. To understand the spatial spread of rabies, in Section 5 we add diffusion to the dog population in the basic SEIR model to obtain a reaction-diffusion equation model and determine the minimum wave speed connecting the disease-free equilibrium to the endemic equilibrium. Finally, in order to investigate how the movement of dogs affects the geographically inter-provincial spread of rabies in Mainland China, in Section 6 we propose a multi-patch model to describe the transmission dynamics of rabies between dogs and humans and use the two-patch submodel to investigate the rabies virus clades lineages and to simulate the human rabies data from Guizhou and Guangxi, Hebei and Fujian, and Sichuan and Shaanxi, respectively. Some discussions are provided in Section 7.