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Metastasis is the major cause of high mortality in lung cancer. Exploring the underlying mechanisms of metastasis thus holds promise for identifying new therapeutic strategies that may enhance survival. Methods: We applied quantitative mass spectrometry to compare protein expression profiles between primary and metastatic lung cancer cells whilst investigating metastasis-related molecular features. Results: We discovered that BCAT1, the key enzyme in branched-chain amino acid metabolism, is overexpressed at the protein level in metastatic lung cancer cells, as well as in metastatic tissues from lung cancer patients. Analysis of transcriptomic data available in the TCGA database revealed that increased BCAT1 transcription is associated with poor overall survival of lung cancer patients. In accord with a critical role in metastasis, shRNA-mediated knockdown of BCAT1 expression reduced migration of metastatic cells in vitro and the metastasis of these cells to distal organs in nude mice. Mechanistically, high levels of BCAT1 depleted α-ketoglutarate (α-KG) and promoted expression of SOX2, a transcription factor regulating cancer cell stemness and metastasis. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that BCAT1 plays an important role in promoting lung cancer cell metastasis, and may define a novel pathway to target as an anti-metastatic therapy.

With the increasing number of female senior executives, the relationship between female senior executives and corporate innovation behaviors has attracted widespread attention, but few works have studied the influences of female CEOs on innovation behaviors and their mechanisms. This paper studies the relationship between CEO's gender and the selection of corporate innovation behaviors, as well as the regulating effect of gender culture on the relationship between them. It was discovered in the studies that (1) if compared with male CEOs, female CEOs have significantly promoted both incremental innovation behaviors and radical innovation behaviors; (2) gender culture has positively regulated the relationship between CEO's gender and corporate incremental innovation behaviors, yet the regulating effect of gender culture on the relationship between CEO's gender and corporate radical innovation behaviors is not significant. Thus, the government needs to further foster a gender culture with gender equality, and actively promote the positive effect of female CEOs in corporate innovations.

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Historical documents provide a general chronological overview of the environmental evolution of the Yangtze River delta (YRD) during the last ca. 2000 years; however, absolute dating of the region’s late Holocene sediment is relatively rare. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating has been increasingly applied to the age determination of Holocene deposits in deltaic environments. In this study, three 23–27 m long drill cores running from south to north were collected from the Qihai plain of the northern YRD in order to reconstruct the history of this region’s formation since the late Holocene. A total of 24 samples from the three cores were subjected to OSL dating using coarse silt-sized (45–63 μm) quartz. The OSL ages range from approximately 190–3490 a revealing that the age of the delta front and delta plain facies in the coring sites are younger than 500 a while the sediments in the underlying prodelta facies are older than 2000 a. On the basis of the large age gap between the two set of deposits, we suspect that the coring sites remained submerged from 2000 to 500 years ago. As the central core has older and coarser sandy deposits than the neighbouring cores, we infer that the central core was located on a sandy mouth bar, while other cores sat within distributary channels within the estuary. The OSL ages are consistent with both the chronology implied by historical documents and other stratigraphic records in the area. This study enhances the chronological framework of land formation and delta evolution in the Qihai plain area of the YRD and thereby consolidates the conclusions derived from the application of a single technique alone.

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