No abstract

The history of click-speaking Khoe-San, and African populations in general, remains poorly understood. We genotyped ~2.3 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 220 southern Africans and found that the Khoe-San diverged from other populations ≥100,000 years ago, but population structure within the Khoe-San dated back to about 35,000 years ago. Genetic variation in various sub-Saharan populations did not localize the origin of modern humans to a single geographic region within Africa; instead, it indicated a history of admixture and stratification. We found evidence of adaptation targeting muscle function and immune response; potential adaptive introgression of protection from ultraviolet light; and selection predating modern human diversification, involving skeletal and neurological development. These new findings illustrate the importance of African genomic diversity in understanding human evolutionary history.

The Anthropocene is witnessing a loss of biodiversity, with well-documented declines in the diversity of ecosystems and species. For intraspecific genetic diversity, however, we lack even basic knowledge on its global distribution. We georeferenced 92,801 mitochondrial sequences for >4500 species of terrestrial mammals and amphibians, and found that genetic diversity is 27% higher in the tropics than in nontropical regions. Overall, habitats that are more affected by humans hold less genetic diversity than wilder regions, although results for mammals are sensitive to choice of genetic locus. Our study associates geographic coordinates with publicly available genetic sequences at a massive scale, yielding an opportunity to investigate both the drivers of this component of biodiversity and the genetic consequences of the anthropogenic modification of nature.

Recently, a pressing requirement of solid-state lighting sources with high performance and low cost has motivated increasing research in metal halide perovskites. However, the relatively low emission efficiency and poor operation stability of perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are still critical drawbacks. In this study, a strategy of solution-processed all-inorganic heterostructure was proposed to overcome the emission efficiency and operation stability issues facing the challenges of perovskite LEDs. Solution-processed n-ZnO nanoparticles and p-NiO are used as the carrier injectors to fabricate all-inorganic heterostructured CsPbBr quantum dot LEDs, and a high-efficiency green emission is achieved with maximum luminance of 6093.2 cd/m, external quantum efficiency of 3.79%, and current efficiency of 7.96 cd/A. More importantly, the studied perovskite LEDs possess a good operation stability after a long test time in air ambient. Typically, the devices can endure a high humidity (75%, 12 h) and a high working temperature (393 K, three heating/cooling cycles) even without encapsulation, and the operation stability is better than any previous reports. It is anticipated that this work will provide an effective strategy for the fabrication of high-performance perovskite LEDs with good stability under ambient and harsh conditions, making practical applications of such LEDs a real possibility.

PurposeEpithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) can contribute to gastric cancer (GC) progression and recurrence following therapy. Tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) are associated with poor outcomes in a variety of cancers. However, it is not clear whether TANs interact with the EMT process during GC development.MethodsImmunohistochemistry was performed to examine the distribution and levels of CD66 + neutrophils in samples from 327 patients with GC. CD66b + TANs were isolated either directly from GC cell suspensions or were conditioned from healthy donor peripheral blood polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs) stimulated with tumor tissue culture supernatants (TTCS) and placed into co-culture with MKN45 or MKN74 cells, after which migration, invasion and EMT were measured. Interleukin-17a (IL-17a) was blocked with a polyclonal antibody, and the STAT3 pathway was blocked with the specific inhibitor AG490.ResultsNeutrophils were widely distributed in gastric tissues of patients with GC and were enriched predominantly at the invasion margin. Neutrophil levels at the invasion margin were an independent predictor of poor disease-free survival (DFS) and disease-specific survival (DSS). IL-17a + neutrophils constituted a large portion of IL-17a-producing cells in GC, and IL-17a was produced at the highest levels in co-culture compared with that in TANs not undergoing co-culture. TANs enhanced the migration, invasion and EMT of GC cells through the secretion of IL-17a, which activated the Janus kinase 2/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK2/STAT3) pathway in GC cells, while deprivation of IL-17a using a neutralizing antibody or inhibition of the JAK2/STAT3 pathway with AG490 markedly reversed these TAN-induced phenotypes in GC cells induced by TANs.ConclusionsNeutrophils correlate with tumor stage and predict poor prognosis in GC. TANs produce IL-17a, which promotes EMT of GC cells through JAK2/STAT3 signalling. Blockade of IL-17a signalling with a neutralizing antibody inhibits TAN-stimulated activity in GC cells. Therefore, IL-17a-targeted therapy might be used to treat patients with GC.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13046-018-1003-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Teasing apart the effects of selection and demography on genetic polymorphism remains one of the major challenges in the analysis of population genomic data. The traditional approach has been to assume that demography would leave a genome-wide signature, whereas the effect of selection would be local. In the light of recent genomic surveys of sequence polymorphism, several authors have argued that this approach is questionable based on the evidence of the pervasive role of positive selection and that new approaches are needed. In the first part of this review, we give a few empirical and theoretical examples illustrating the difficulty in teasing apart the effects of selection and demography on genomic polymorphism patterns. In the second part, we review recent efforts to detect recent positive selection. Most available methods still rely on an a priori classification of sites in the genome but there are many promising new approaches. These new methods make use of the latest developments in statistics, explore aspects of the data that had been neglected hitherto or take advantage of the emerging population genomic data. A current and promising approach is based on first estimating demographic and genetic parameters, using, e.g., a likelihood or approximate Bayesian computation framework, focusing on extreme outlier regions, and then using an independent method to confirm these. Finally, especially for species where evidence of natural selection has been limited, more experimental and versatile approaches that contrast populations under varied environmental constraints might be more successful compared with species-wide genome scans in search of specific signatures.

Recently, substantial progress has been made in perovskite-based light-emitting devices (LEDs) with near-infrared, red, green, and blue emissions. However, short-wavelength perovskite LEDs targeted at violet emission remain a great challenge. Moreover, the majority of previously reported devices were focused on the conventional lead halide perovskites. In this study, for the first time, electrically driven violet emission (408 nm) from lead-free Cs3Sb2Br9 quantum dots (QDs) was demonstrated at room temperature, the shortest wavelength for perovskite LEDs as far as we know, and an external quantum efficiency of ∼0.206% was achieved. The device demonstrated an excellent working stability. After a long-term running for 6 h, almost 90% of the initial electroluminescence performance was retained, and no current density rising occurred with the running time. The results obtained suggest that the lead-free Cs3Sb2Br9 QDs are potentially attractive candidates for the preparation of environment-friendly and stable violet LEDs, making practical applications of them a real possibility.

High-performance perovskite photodetectors based on solution-processed all-inorganic CsPbBr3 thin films were fabricated with a high photoresponsivity and on/off photocurrent ratio.