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Detection of B7-H3 expression in gastric carcinoma tissue is beneficial to the judgment of the prognosis of gastric carcinoma patients and the choice of treatment.

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Genome-embedded ribonucleotides arrest replicative DNA polymerases (Pols) and cause DNA breaks. Whether mammalian DNA repair Pols efficiently use template ribonucleotides and promote RNA-templated DNA repair synthesis remains unknown. We find that human Polθ reverse transcribes RNA, similar to retroviral reverse transcriptases (RTs). Polθ exhibits a significantly higher velocity and fidelity of deoxyribonucleotide incorporation on RNA versus DNA. The 3.2-Å crystal structure of Polθ on a DNA/RNA primer-template with bound deoxyribonucleotide reveals that the enzyme undergoes a major structural transformation within the thumb subdomain to accommodate A-form DNA/RNA and forms multiple hydrogen bonds with template ribose 2′-hydroxyl groups like retroviral RTs. Last, we find that Polθ promotes RNA-templated DNA repair in mammalian cells. These findings suggest that Polθ was selected to accommodate template ribonucleotides during DNA repair.

Engineered 3D DNA crystals are promising scaffolds for bottom-up construction of three-dimensional, macroscopic devices from the molecular level. Nevertheless, this has been hindered by the highly constrained conditions for DNA crystals to be stable. Here we report a method to prepare robust 3D DNA crystals by postassembly ligation to remove this constraint. Specifically, sticky ends at crystal contacts were enzymatically ligated, and the covalent bonds significantly enhanced crystal stability, e.g., being stable at 65 °C. This method also enabled the fabrication of DNA crystals with complex architectures including crystal shell, core−shell, and matryoshka dolls. Furthermore, we have demonstrated the applications of the robust DNA crystals in biocatalysis and protein entrapment. Our study removes one key obstacle for the applications of DNA crystals and offers many new opportunities in DNA nanotechnology.

This manuscript reports an effort to stabilize self-assembled DNA crystals. Owing to their weak inter-unit cohesion, self-assembled DNA crystals are fragile, which limits the potential applications of such crystals. To overcome this problem, another molecule was introduced, which binds to the cohesive sites and stabilizes the inter-unit interactions. The extra interactions greatly improve the stability of the DNA crystals. The original DNA crystals are only stable in solutions of high ionic strength (e.g., ≥1.2 M (NH4)2SO4); in contrast, the stabilized crystals can be stable at ionic strengths as low as that of a 0.02 M solution of (NH4)2SO4. The current strategy is expected to represent a general approach for increasing the stability of self-assembled DNA nanostructures for potential applications, for example, as structural scaffolds and molecular sieves.

Purpose: This phase II/III, non-randomized clinical trial aimed to determine the efficacy and safety of the combination of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells transfusion for patients with colorectal liver metastases (CRLMs). Experimental Design: A total of 60 eligible patients with CRLMs were enrolled and divided into Group A (RFA alone, n = 30) and Group B (RFA plus CIK, n = 30), and following enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot assay was performed in 8 patients with CEA > 50 ng/mL pre-RFA and 7 days post-RFA and CIK treatment, respectively. Results: The median progression-free survival (PFS) times of Group A and Group B were 18.5 months and 23 months, respectively (P = 0.0336). The 3-year progression-free rates were 13.3% in Group A and 20.3% in Group B, respectively. The median overall survival time was 43 months in Group A, and not reached in Group B. The 3-year survival rates were 64.6% in Group A and 81.0% in Group B, respectively (P = 0.1187). Among the 8 patients with CEA > 50ng/mL, 6 had increase of circulating CEA-specific T cells after RFA (P = 0.010). After CIK cell therapy, the number of CEA-specific T cells increased in all the 8 patients comparing with that pre-treatment (P = 0.001) and in 7 patients comparing with that post-RFA (P = 0.028). Conclusions: We firstly confirm that the combination of RFA and CIK cells boosts CEA-specific T cell response and shows to be an efficacious and safe treatment modality for patients with CRLMs.

This manuscript reports astrategy for controlling the crystallization kinetics and improving the quality of engineered self-assembled 3D DNAc rystals.G rowing large,h igh-quality biomacromolecule crystals is critically important for determining the 3D structures of biomacromolecules.I to ften presents agreat challenge to structural biologists.Herein, we introduce ar ationally designed agent to modulate the crystallization process.U nder such conditions,f ewer,b ut larger,c rystals that yield diffraction patterns of modestly higher resolution are produced compared with the crystals from conditions without the modulating agent. We attribute the improvement to as maller number of nuclei and slow growth rate of crystallization. This strategy is expected to be generally applicable for crystallization of other biomacromolecules.Supportinginformation and the ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under: https://doi.