CANGZHI JIA¹, DONG JIN¹, XIN WANG¹, QI ZHAO^2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 1105-1121, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016655

Abstract N⁶-Methyladenine is a dynamic and reversible post translational modification, which plays an essential role in various biological processes. Because of the current inability to identify m6A-containing mRNAs, computational approaches have been developed to identify m6A sites in DNA sequences. Aiming to improve prediction performance, we introduced a novel ensemble computational approach based on three hybrid deep neural networks, including a convolutional neural network, a capsule network, and a bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) with the self-attention mechanism, to identify m6A sites in four tissues of three species. Across a total of 11 datasets, we selected different feature subsets, after optimized… More >

LEJUN GONG^1,2,*, SHEHAI ZHOU¹, JINGMEI CHEN¹, YONGMIN LI¹, LI ZHANG⁴, ZHIHONG GAO³

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 951-960, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.016625

Abstract Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in many life activities such as epigenetic material regulation, cell cycle regulation, dosage compensation and cell differentiation regulation, and are associated with many human diseases. There are many limitations in identifying and annotating lncRNAs using traditional biological experimental methods. With the development of high-throughput sequencing technology, it is of great practical significance to identify the lncRNAs from massive RNA sequence data using machine learning method. Based on the Bagging method and Decision Tree algorithm in ensemble learning, this paper proposes a method of lncRNAs gene sequence identification called BDLR. The identification results… More >

ZHENGUO SHI^#,*, QIAOYUN WU^#, HAIYAN SHI, SONGTIE YING, LIANG TAO

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 979-988, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.015345

Abstract NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated cell pyroptosis aggravates the development of cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury, and the aim of this study is to investigate the potential utilization of the Chinese medicine, Puerarin, in treating this disease. Through conducting in vitro and in vivo experiments, the present study illustrated that Puerarin regulated LncRNA double homeobox A pseudogene 8 (DUXAP8)/miR-223-3p axis to inactivate NLRP3-mediated pyroptotic cell death, resulting in the attenuation of I/R injury. Specifically, the cerebral I/R injury in rat models and hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R) in primary hippocampus neuron (PHN) cells were inducted, which were subsequently exposed to Puerarin treatment. As expected, we validated that… More >

MENGTING LI^*, YI-ER QIU, KAIFENG ZHENG

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.4, pp. 1089-1096, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.013432

Abstract The effect of the baicalin, a bio-active flavonoid extracted from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, on the carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄) induced liver fibrosis was investigated. To compare the effect of baicalin on the liver fibrosis, five different groups of rats treated by 100, 200, and 400 mg/kg baicalin were studied. Upon CCl₄ treatment, the levels of procollagen type III, aspartate aminotransferase, aminotransferase, hyaluronic acid, and hydroxyproline were significantly increased, whereas the superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase content were decreased. These changes in the biochemical parameters, which are associated with liver function, were significantly attenuated by the baicalin treatment, suggesting that baicalin can… More >

LIMIN CHEN^1,2, XIAOWEI LI¹, TIANJUN HE², QUANCONG WU², TINGTING CHEN³, JUN HUANG^1,*, YAOBIN LU^1,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 821-828, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.016450

Abstract Venom plays several important roles in the life of the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren. Laboratory rearing significantly affected the toxin component of S. invicta. However, the molecular mechanism of the change of venomous components when kept in the laboratory is unclear. In this study, RNA sequencing technique (RNA-Seq) was performed to explore differentially expressed genes in the venom gland of S. invicta at 0, 10, and 60 days after laboratory rearing. The RNA-Seq results showed that the expression of a large number of genes changed. The DEGs were involved in multiple pathways, including proteolysis, serine-type endopeptidase, and allergen. Furthermore,… More >

PEI LIU, ZHE CHEN, XIAOQIONG MA^*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 737-743, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.015786

Abstract Sphingosine kinase 1 (SphK1) is an important synthetase during the synthesis of sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) from sphingosine (Sph). Previous studies demonstrated that arsenic trioxide (As₂O₃) could reduce the level of S1P in human gastric cancer cell line MGC-803, indicating that As₂O₃ may inhibit the activity of SphK1. In this study, the effect of As₂O₃ on the SphK1 activation pathway was investigated. Western blot and quantitative real-time PCR analysis were used to evaluate the changes in protein and mRNA levels. The multi-dimensional mass spectrometry-based shotgun lipidomics method (MDMS-SL) was used for the quantitative detection of phosphatidylserine (PS) and phosphatidic acid (PA). The… More >

HUI QU^1,2,3,4,#, RUICHUAN SHI^1,2,3,4,#, BOWEN YANG^1,2,3,4, XI CHEN^1,2,3,4, YUJIA SONG^1,2,3,4, LINGZI HE^1,2,3,4, YITING SUN^1,2,3,4, YUJING YANG^1,2,3,4, ZHI LI^1,2,3,4,*, XIUJUAN QU^1,2,3,4,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 721-735, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.015867

Abstract The peritoneum is the most common site of recurrence of gastric cancer (GC). Early occult peritoneal metastasis is difficult to detect by imaging examination. Stratifying the risk of peritoneal metastasis in patients with different Lauren subtypes is of great clinical value. We performed a univariate Cox regression to identify those genes with prognostic value of overall survival (OS) and peritoneal-specified disease-free survival (psDFS) from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. The candidate genes were screened by the Subpopulation Treatment Effect Pattern Plot (STEPP) method. Propensity score matching (PSM) analysis was used to reduce the interference of confounders on the results. Based… More >

FEI ZHANG^1,2,#, JIANZHONG LAI^3,#, RONGHAN HE^1,#, YI SHI⁴, KUN XU⁵, SHIHAI JIANG¹, TANGZHAO LIANG¹, WANYU ZHAO⁵, WEIDA REN⁵, LEI ZHU⁶, SONG JIN^2,*, KUN WANG^1,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 699-709, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.015726

Abstract Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a novel class of non-coding RNA that have recently shown to have huge capabilities in the regulation of gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. Growing evidence has indicated that circRNAs could serve as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) to sponge microRNAs (miRNAs) and suppress functions of targeted miRNAs. Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common malignant primary bone cancer. Hsa_circ_0002137 is upregulated in OS. However, the role of hsa_circ_0002137 in OS remains unclear. Using miRNA pull-down assay, we showed that cir_0002137 sponged hsa-miR-1246, and BCL2 apoptosis regulator (BCL2) mRNA was a potential target of hsa-miR-1246 in human osteosarcoma… More >

JINYONG HUANG¹, TIANMING TENG¹, BO BIAN¹, YUCHEN XUE¹, LONGFEI HUANG¹, ZHELONG XU², QING YANG^1,*, YUEMIN SUN^1,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 667-675, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2021.015917

Abstract Zinc is a trace element involved in maintaining cellular structure and function. Although zinc is associated with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), there have been few reports on this association. This study aimed to evaluate the correlation between Zip14 and expression of endoplasmic reticulum stress (ERS) associated molecules in hypertrophied hearts of rats. Dahl salt-sensitive rats were fed a high salt diet to establish a left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) rat model. RT-PCR was used to determine Zip14, activating transcription factor (ATF4), ATF6, x-box-binding protein 1 (xBP1), C/EBP homologous protein (CHOP), immunoglobulin-binding protein (BiP) mRNA expression. Western blotting was used to evaluate… More >

LUCÍA VELOZ^1,2, SANTIAGO A. BOSCH^1,3, GONZALO APARICIO^1,2,*, FLAVIO R. ZOLESSI^1,2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.3, pp. 639-644, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.018798

Abstract Cell extrusion is an active mechanism to eliminate non-viable or supernumerary cells in healthy epithelia. It also plays a role in carcinogenesis, both in tumor growth (apical extrusion) and metastasis (basal extrusion). Embryonic tissues like the neuroepithelium, on the other hand, present rates of proliferation comparable to that of carcinomas, without the occurrence of cell extrusion. However, the downregulation or phosphorylation of actin-modulating proteins like MARCKS, causes extensive neuroepithelial apical cell extrusion. As changes in MARCKS proteins phosphorylation and expression have also been correlated to carcinogenesis, we propose here an integrated model for their functions in epithelial integrity. More >