Abstract Background Spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) are critical for sustaining spermatogenesis. Even though several regulators of SSC have been identified in rodents, the regulatory mechanism of SSC in humans has yet to be discovered. Methods To explore the regulatory mechanisms of human SSCs, we analyzed publicly available human testicular single-cell sequencing data and found that Ankyrin repeat and SOCS box protein 9 (ASB9) is highly expressed in SSCs. We examined the expression localization of ASB9 using immunohistochemistry and overexpressed ASB9 in human SSC lines to explore its role in SSC proliferation and apoptosis. Meanwhile, we used immunoprecipitation to find the target protein of ASB9 and verified its functions. In addition, we examined the changes in the distribution of ASB9 in non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA) patients using Western blot and immunofluorescence. Results The results of uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) clustering and pseudotime analysis showed that ASB9 was highly expressed in SSCs, and its expression gradually increased during development. The immunohistochemical and dual-color immunofluorescence results displayed that ASB9 was mainly expressed in nonproliferating SSCs. Overexpression of ASB9 in the SSC line revealed significant inhibition of cell proliferation and increased apoptosis. We predicted the target proteins of ASB9 and verified that hypoxia-inducible factor 1-alpha inhibitor (HIF1AN), but not creatine kinase B-type (CKB), has a direct interaction with ASB9 in human SSC line using protein immunoprecipitation experiments. Subsequently, we re-expressed HIF1AN in ASB9 overexpressing cells and found that HIF1AN reversed the proliferative and apoptotic changes induced by ASB9 overexpression. In addition, we found that ABS9 was significantly downregulated in some NOA patients, implying a correlation between ASB9 dysregulation and impaired spermatogenesis. Conclusion ASB9 is predominantly expressed in human SSCs, it affects the proliferation and apoptotic process of the SSC line through HIF1AN, and its abnormal expression may be associated with NOA.

Abstract Drought stress is one of the key abiotic stresses affecting plant growth, crop yield and food quality. The main objective of this study is to investigate the potential effectiveness of hyperspectral imaging with band selection method for the rapid detection of the early drought stress of tomatoes. First, the unsupervised algorithm - K-means and statistical histogram are used to extract samples representing each experimental treatment group. Then, to solve problems related to the high redundancy and correlation of hyperspectral data, band matrix reduction method (BMRM) based on recursive feature elimination theory is proposed to determine the optimal band subset. The band matrix is constructed according to the band ranking obtained by the discrimination coefficient - C o e f i, which is calculated from the average spectral curve and the first-derivative spectrum. Finally, the effectiveness of waveband selection algorithms was validated by comparison with successive projections algorithm, competitive adaptive reweighted sampling, recursive feature elimination with cross-validation and full spectrum. The results demonstrated that BMRM achieved higher classification accuracy with fewer bands selected, and the amount of calculation is not greatly improved. The proposed method provides a more accurate, and effective way of detecting early drought stress.

BACKGROUND: Accumulating evidence has confirmed that miR-196a plays a critical role in tumorigenesis and tumor progression in a variety of cancers. It has been demonstrated that miR-196a is highly up-regulated in laryngeal cancer by miRNA profiling analysis. However, the functional mechanism of miR-196a in laryngeal cancer remains unclear. This study aims to explore the mechanism of miR-196a in laryngeal cancer METHODS: In the present study, we conducted qPCR analysis of miR-196a expression in human laryngeal cancer and showed that miR-196a was overexpressed in tumor-derived samples and laryngeal cancer cell lines compared with matched normal controls. Further functional analysis of miR-196a demonstrated that the inhibition of miR-196a could inhibit laryngeal cell-cycle progression and proliferation in vitro. Luciferase reporter assay and western blot confirmed that miR-196a directly targeted p27kip1. Moreover, in order to investigate whether miR-196a regulated cell growth in laryngeal cancer cells by targeting p27kip1, rescue studies were performed in laryngeal cancer cells RESULTS: Results showed that overexpression of p27kip1 rescue decreased cell proliferation caused by miR-196a inhibitors. A negative relation between miR-196a and p27kip1 expression in laryngeal cancer tissues were also noted by further analyses CONCLUSIONS: The present study showed that miR-196a was upregulated in laryngeal cancer and promoted cell proliferation by downregulating p27kip1 in laryngeal cancer. However, further studies are needed to verify this finding

Background and Objectives: Currently, there is a serious need to find practical biomarker(s) for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) therapeutic target(s). This study aimed to investigate the association between microRNA (miRNA, miR) expression level in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) and symptomatology improvement in MDD patients before and after six-week antidepressant treatment. Methods: By using an Affymetrix array that covers 723 human miRNAs, 26 miRNAs were identified with significantly altered expression in PBMCs in MDD patients, of which 10 miRNAs were selected for quantitative real-time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) study. Twenty out of all the 81 MDD patients were selected for miRNA expression levels testing and symptomatology assessments before and after six-week treatment. Results: Compared with the control group, the expression levels of miR-26b, miR-4743, miR-4498, miR-4485 and miR-1972 of the MDD group were significantly higher (P < 0.05); the changes of expression levels of miR-4743, miR-4498, miR-4485 and miR-1972 were positively related to retardation improvement (P < 0.05), and the change of expression level of miR-26b negatively to the improvement of day and night change (P < 0.05); regression analysis result demonstrated that the alteration of miR-4485 expression accounted for 28.8% of retardation improvement (P < 0.05). Conclusions: These five miRNAs (miR-4743, miR-4498, miR-4485, miR-1972 and miR-26b) may serve as biomarker for MDD diagnosis and therapeutic targets for MDD treatment.