Excessive or improper nitrogen (N) application rates negatively affect crop production and thereby environmental quality, particularly for winter wheat production in the North China Plain. Therefore, it is very important to optimize N fertilizer input to balance grain yield, environmental risk, and benefits under irrigated conditions. Three long-term stationary field experiments including five N levels, from 0 to 300 kg ha
-1
[0 (N0), 90 (N90), 180 (N180), 240 (N240), and 300 (N300) kg ha
-1
] were carried out to investigate the effects of N regime on wheat yield, photosynthesis, and N balance at different sites. The grain yield and protein content increased quadratically with N rate, and the maximum values were 8087 kg ha
-1
and 13.9% at N application rates of 250 and 337 kg N ha
-1
, respectively. N application increased the photosynthetic fluorescence parameters (Pn, Gs, and Tr) and N metabolism enzyme activities (NR and GS) which then increased grain yield. The leaching of soil nitrate into the deeper soil layers ( > 100 cm) increased with higher N fertilization and experimental years. The partial factor productivity (PFPN) was decreased by N because the apparent N loss increased with N application rate. In order to balance grain yield, N use efficiency (NUE), and N loss, the recommended N rate should be 120–171 kg N ha
-1
, and the corresponding yields and apparent N loss were 7278–7787 ka ha
-1
and 22–37 kg ha
-1
, respectively.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death. The prognosis of metastatic lung cancer is poor. We had previously established the condition to expand human γδ T-cells in peripheral blood and tumor infiltrating T lymphocytes with immobilized anti-TCRγδ antibody. Such expanded γδ T-cells exhibited potent cytolytic activity to different tumor cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Here we further characterized human anti-TCRγδ-expanded γδ T-cells and tested their antitumor function in treatment for lung cancer in nude mice. In comparison to γδ T-cells activated by phosphoantigen, a prevalent Vδ2 stimulus, anti-TCRγδ-expanded γδ T-cells had similar major subset with Vδ2 phenotype, but they had about 10% of Vδ1 subsets and high percentages of CD27 -CD45RA -and CD27 -CD45RA + effector cells. They also displayed TCR diversity of multiple clones. Importantly, the antibody-expanded γδ T-cells showed strong cytotoxicity to three lung cancer cell lines and had significant antitumor effect on squamous lung carcinoma in nude mice. The ex vivo anti-TCRγδ-expanded γδ T-cells prolonged tumor bearing mouse survival and slowed down tumor growth, with similar efficacy to chemotherapy by cis-platinum. Moreover, adoptively transferred human γδ T-cells survived for more than one month in vivo. Finally, γδ T-cells derived from 11 cases of patients with lung cancer had proliferative activity after TCRγδ ligandation, displayed marked cytotoxicity to lung cancer cells and expressed cytotoxicity-or antitumor activity-related molecules, such as perforin, granzyme A and B, Fas ligand, TNFα and IFNγ. Taken together, our finding suggests that anti-TCRγδ expanded γδ T-cells may be used as cellular therapy in treatment of lung cancer.
Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection is widespread in China, but few studies have been carried out in Guangdong Province. This study aimed to characterize the prevalence of HEV infections among swine, swine farmers and the general population in Guangdong Province. We conducted an epidemiological study that included swine, swine farmers and health examination attendees in Guangdong from 2011 to 2013. The overall seroprevalence of anti-HEV antibodies in swine was 64.7%. The results revealed that growing pigs, sows and boars (OR ranges from 3.5 to 21.5) have a higher risk than nursery pigs. HEV RNA in swine bile showed that HEV is epidemic in swine in the Pearl River Delta, with the highest prevalence of 22.73% in Foshan. Some genomes of HEV strains from each district were sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis of partial open reading frame 2 (ORF2) shows that they belong to genotype IV and are most closely related to isolates from China. In total, 307 participants were enrolled in the study, including 114 swine farmers and 193 attendees from hospitals. IgG anti-HEV was detected in 48.25% of swine farmers and in 38.34% of the general population. Seroprevalence rates were almost stratified by age, with a higher positive rate for males compared to females across all age groups. Women on swine farms appeared to have a lower risk of infection compared to the general population, revealing that the risk factors for HEV infection are not unique. The results suggested that there were other risk factors for HEV infection. HEV infection is prevalent in Guangdong, but due to the small sample sizes, more investigations are needed to assess the potential impact of HEV infection, and many additional risk factors should be considered.
Certain carbohydrate-based biomarkers are known to correlate with cancer formation and progression. By targeting sialyl Lewis X, we have developed the first boronolectin-MS tag conjugate, which allows for MALDI-based imaging of cancer based on its cell surface carbohydrate.
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