Abstract It has been reported that glycogen in Escherichia coli have two structural states, that is, fragility and stability, which alters dynamically. However, molecular mechanisms behind the structural alterations are not fully understood. In this study, we focused on the potential roles of two important glycogen degradation enzymes, glycogen phosphorylase (glgP) and glycogen debranching enzyme (glgX), in glycogen structural alterations. The fine molecular structure of glycogen particles in Escherichia coli and three mutants (ΔglgP, ΔglgX and ΔglgP/ΔglgX) were examined, which showed that glycogen in E. coli ΔglgP and E. coli ΔglgP/ΔglgX were consistently fragile while being consistently stable in E. […]

Abstract There are many commercially available glycogen particles in the market due to their bioactive functions as food additive, drug carrier and natural moisturizer, etc. It would be beneficial to rapidly determine the origins of commercially-available glycogen particles, which could facilitate the establishment of quality control methodology for glycogen-containing products. With its non-destructive, label-free and low-cost features, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy(SERS) is an attractive technique with high potential to discriminate chemical compounds in a rapid mode. In this study, we applied the combination of SERS technique and machine leaning algorithms on glycogen analysis, which successfully predicted the origins of glycogen […]

Abstract Over the past decades, conventional methods and molecular assays have been developed for the detection of tuberculosis (TB). However, these techniques suffer limitations in the identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), such as long turnaround time and low detection sensitivity, etc., not even mentioning the difficulty in discriminating antibiotics-resistant Mtb strains that cause great challenges in TB treatment and prevention. Thus, techniques with easy implementation for rapid diagnosis of Mtb infection are in high demand for routine TB diagnosis. Due to the label-free, low-cost and non-invasive features, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been extensively investigated for its potential in bacterial pathogen identification. However, at current […]

Content The identification of lysine (symbol Lys or K) succinylation (Ksucc) sites has focused on uncovering the basis for the mechanism and function of lysine succinylation modifications. Traditional experimental methods for Ksucc site localization are usually expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, it is necessary to construct an efficient computational method to predict the presence of Ksucc sites in protein sequences. In this study, we propose a novel and efficient predictor for identifying Ksucc sites based on deep learning algorithms, called Deep_KsuccSite. The predictor employs composition, transformation and distribution (CTD) composition (CTDC), enhanced grouped amino acid composition (EGAAC), amphipathic pseudoamino acid composition […]

Abstract The optical properties of few-layer (FL) GaSe are investigated using thickness- and temperature-dependent Raman scattering and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies. The vibrational modes exhibit linear softening with increasing temperature, with temperature coefficient values related to anharmonic phonon-phonon/electron coupling. Micro-PL is used to study the variation of exciton bands and structural features of FL GaSe. The temperature-dependent study from 100 to 380 K shows that the PL red-shifts due to a band gap narrowing, while the intensity decreases attributable to thermally stimulated nonradiative recombination caused by an increase in the electron−phonon interaction. The behavior of free and bound excitons and deep […]

Abstract Molecular mechanisms behind structural alterations between fragile and stable glycogen α particles in liver are not clear yet. In this pilot study, we re-examined the diurnal alterations of glycogen structure from the perspective of liver tissue transcriptome. By comparing the structures of liver glycogen from mice at 12 am, 8 am, 12 pm, and 8 pm (light-on: 6 am; light-off: 6 pm), we re-confirmed that the liver glycogen was fragile at 12 am and 8 am and stable at 12 pm and 8 pm as previously reported. The structural differences of glycogen particles at 12 am and 12 pm […]

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruptions to the functioning of societies and their health systems. Prior to the pandemic, health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) were particularly stretched and vulnerable. The International Society of Global Health (ISoGH) sought to systematically identify priorities for health research that would have the potential to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in LMICs. Methods The Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) method was used to identify COVID-19-related research priorities. All ISoGH members were invited to participate. Seventy-nine experts in clinical, translational, and population research contributed 192 research questions […]

Objective Epidemiological characteristics of the COVID-19 outbreak in Yangzhou city caused by the highly contagious Delta variant strain of SARS-CoV-2 virus were investigated in this retrospective descriptive study to provide prevention and control guidelines for outbreaks in future. Methods All the epidemiological data used in this study were manually collected from the official website of Yangzhou Municipal Health Committee from July 28 to August 26, 2021 and then were analyzed systematically and statistically in this study. Results A total of 570 COVID-19 cases were reported during the short-term outbreak in Yangzhou City. Ages of infected individuals ranged from 1 to […]

Abstract With its low-cost, label-free and non-destructive features, Raman spectroscopy is becoming an attractive technique with high potential to discriminate the causative agent of bacterial infections and bacterial infections per se. However, it is challenging to achieve consistency and accuracy of Raman spectra from numerous bacterial species and phenotypes, which significantly hinders the practical application of the technique. In this study, we analyzed surfaced enhanced Raman spectra (SERS) through machine learning algorithms in order to discriminate bacterial pathogens quickly and accurately. Two unsupervised machine learning methods, K-means Clustering (K-Means) and Agglomerative Nesting (AGNES) were performed for clustering analysis. In addition, […]

Abstract In this paper, an epidemiological study was performed by focusing on all confirmed patients with COVID-19 in Xuzhou, a prefecture-level city, and a transportation hub with 10.44 million population in the east region of China. The median age of the patients is 42-year-old and 45.57% are male; 25 cases (31.65%) are imported. 23 cases (29.11%) were confirmed between January 26 to 31, 2020 while 56 cases (70.89%) were from February 1 to 16, 2020. Among the ten administrative divisions of Xuzhou city,Suining county (n=31) and Pizhou City (n=15) have the most cases while Tongshan district has none. A representative […]