MicroRNA-126 (miR-126) suppresses the migration, proliferation and invasion of colon cancer cells. However, the underlying mechanisms of miR-126 in colon cancer have not been fully elucidated. In this study, in vivo experiments revealed that miR-126 inhibits colon cancer growth and metastasis. Furthermore, miR-126 was down-regulated in human colon cancer tissue, and its expression was inversely correlated with TNM stage and metastasis of patients. Low level of miR-126 identified patients with poor prognosis. And we found that miR-126 expression was negatively correlated with the expression levels of chemokine (C-X-C motif) receptor 4 (CXCR4) and components of signaling pathway of Ras homolog gene family, member A (RhoA) in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, we verified that miR-126 negatively regulated CXCR4 and RhoA signaling in vitro. In addition, either in miR-126-overexpressing or in miR- 126-silenced colon cancer cells, the restoration of CXCR4 could significantly reverse the proliferation and invasion, as well as abolish the effects of miR-126 on RhoA signaling pathway. Collectively, these results demonstrated that miR-126 acts as a tumor suppressor by inactivating RhoA signaling via CXCR4 in colon cancer. And miR-126 may serve as a prognostic marker for monitoring and treating colon cancer.
Solar steam generation has emerged as a promising technology for water purification. Carbon materials are the most widely investigated photothermal conversion materials, but it remains challenging to effectively improve the efficiency of carbon‐based photothermal films cost effectively. Herein, carbon nanotubes (CNTs)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hybrid gels are designed by simply freezing/thawing the mixture of CNTs and the PVA polymers, in which the CNT light absorbers are well embedded in PVA molecular meshes. Combining the super‐hydrophilic feature and the capillary effect of the PVA porous networks, the hierarchical PVA gel enables efficient water transport from internal capillary channels to molecular meshes. Moreover, PVA molecule chains wrapped on the CNT light absorbers also function as energy‐absorbing media to reduce heat loss, achieving confinement of thermal energy to the water clusters. With this advanced solar steam generation system, the converted thermal energy can be utilized in situ to drive the vaporization of water around the CNTs. The CNTs/PVA hybrid gel shows a high energy efficiency of 90.5% and water evaporation rate of 2.06 kg m−2 h−1 under 1 sun illumination. In addition to taking advantage of the inherent bimodal porous structures, the fabricated evaporator can realize fast and long‐term stable solar steam generation.
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