A silicon mode and polarization-division multiplexing scheme based on a densely packed waveguide array structured as a bus waveguide is introduced. A short adiabatic taper is adopted for (de)multiplexing. Such a structure shows theoretical insertion losses that are <0.05 dB and crosstalk that is <-20 dB over a wide wavelength band for all five supported modes. The structures for (de)multiplexing are fabricated and characterized experimentally. A device, which consists of a multiplexer, a 50-μm-long straight-bus waveguide, and a demultiplexer, exhibits insertion losses that are <0.6 dB and crosstalk that is <-15 dB over an 80 nm wavelength band. The demonstrated (de)multiplexer has a total length of 60 μm, and the bus waveguide has an effective width of 1.58 μm.
A grating coupler for interfacing between a silicon-on-insulator waveguide and a single-mode fiber located at a perfectly vertical direction is demonstrated based on a tilted membrane structure. The proposed design is compatible with that of conventional grating couplers for oblique fibers and facilitates mass production. A peak coupling efficiency of 28.5% and 1 dB bandwidth of 38 nm are obtained experimentally for transverse-electrics polarized light. Back reflection in the SOI waveguide is also estimated to be 1.4%. The present grating coupler for perfectly vertical fiber exhibits similar performances to the conventional grating coupler for oblique fiber concerning coupling efficiency, bandwidth, and back reflections.
Background Selenium-binding protein 1 (SELENBP1), a member of the selenium-containing protein family, plays an important role in malignant tumorigenesis and progression. However, it is currently lacking research about relationship between SELENBP1 and immunotherapy in colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods We first analyzed the expression levels of SELENBP1 based on the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Oncomine andUALCAN. Chisq.test, Fisher.test, Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test and logistic regression were used to analyze the relationship of clinical characteristics with SELENBP1 expression. Then Gene ontology/ Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (GO/KEGG), Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) enrichment analysis to clarify bio-processes and signaling pathways. The cBioPortal was used to perform analysis of mutation sites, types, etc. of SELENBP1. In addition, the correlation of SELENBP1 gene with tumor immune infiltration and prognosis was analyzed using ssGSEA, ESTIMATE, tumor immune dysfunction and rejection (TIDE) algorithm and Kaplan-Meier (KM) Plotter database. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and western blotting (WB) were used to validate the expression of SELENBP1 in CRC samples and matched normal tissues. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was further performed to detect the expression of SELENBP1 in CRC samples and matched normal tissues. Results We found that SELENBP1 expression was lower in CRC compared to normal colorectal tissue and was associated with poor prognosis. The aggressiveness of CRC increased with decreased SELENBP1 expression. Enrichment analysis showed that the SELENBP1 gene was significantly enriched in several pathways, such as programmed death 1 (PD-1) signaling, signaling by interleukins, TCR signaling, collagen degradation, costimulation by the CD28 family. Decreased expression of SELENBP1 was associated with DNA methylation and mutation. Immune infiltration analysis identified that SELENBP1 expression was closely related to various immune cells and immune chemokines/receptors. With increasing SELENBP1 expression, immune and stromal components in the tumor microenvironment were significantly decreased. SELENBP1 expression in CRC patients affects patient prognosis by influencing tumor immune infiltration. Beside this, SELENBP1 expression is closely related to the sensitivity of chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Conclusions Survival analysis as well as enrichment and immunoassay results suggest that SELENBP1 can be considered as a promising prognostic biomarker for CRC. SELENBP1 expression is closely associated with immune infiltration and immunotherapy. Collectively, our study provided useful information on the oncogenic role of SELENBP1, contributing to further exploring the underlying mechanisms.
and are predicted to become indispensable in our future lives owing to their vast application foreground. [1][2][3] Prerequisite for a truly practical flexible battery is that the device should be flexible, stretchable/compressible, and durable. [4] In the series of flexible batteries, [5,6] quasi-solidstate zinc ion batteries (QZIBs) show an outstanding privilege owing to their low cost and high safety, surpassing conventional batteries that are prone to suffer from the leakage of harmful organic electrolytes under extreme and/or repetitive compression and stretching conditions. [7,8] Lightweight and stretchable QZIBs with high energy density are the development direction of this type of flexible battery. However, it is difficult to combine good flexibility and high energy density in a single flexible quasi-solid-state battery concurrently. [9] Ideally, the performance of flexible QZIBs can be maintained well under various compressing and stretching conditions, which strictly depend on the device design and configuration. As the core component of flexible QZIBs, the electrodes must be resilient and durable, and the conventional metal-foil-based electrode can hardly meet the requirement. This type of electrode is always stiff and subject to fatigue failures, making it difficult to restore its original shape after a certain deformation. Moreover, the active material is easily delaminated from the smooth surface of the metal foil when the batteries are bent. [10] So, the active material of flexible electrodes has always grown on the substrate of carbon cloth, [11] carbon nanofibers, [12] carbon paper, [13] etc. However, the cost of these carbon-based materials is always high, which hinders their wide application. Moreover, the hydrophilicity of carbon cloth is poor, some indispensable treatments to improve its hydrophilicity is needed. These material treatment methods are always complicated and dangerous, which greatly increases the complexity of the electrode preparation process. Comparatively, some carbonaceous materials with foam-like structures may also be a suitable configuration for flexible electrodes due to low cost, high porosity, and robustness under mechanical strain/stress, especially the carbon foams (CFs) carbonized from the polyurethane and melamine polymers. As these CFs served as the supporter for some active
The CRISPR-Cas system has been widely applied in prokaryotic genome editing with its high efficiency and easy operation. We constructed some “scissors plasmids” via using the temperature-sensitive pJOE8999 shuttle plasmid, which carry the different 20nt (N20) guiding the Cas9 nuclease as a scissors to break the target DNA. We successfully used scissors plasmids to eliminate native plasmids from Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus cereus, and specifically killed B. anthracis. When curing pXO1 and pXO2 virulence plasmids from B. anthracis A16PI2 and A16Q1, respectively, we found that the plasmid elimination percentage was slightly higher when the sgRNA targeted the replication initiation region (96–100%), rather than the non-replication initiation region (88–92%). We also tried using a mixture of two scissors plasmids to simultaneously eliminate pXO1 and pXO2 plasmids from B. anthracis, and the single and double plasmid-cured rates were 29 and 14%, respectively. To our surprise, when we used the scissor plasmid containing two tandem sgRNAs to cure the target plasmids pXO1 and pXO2 from wild strain B. anthracis A16 simultaneously, only the second sgRNA could guide Cas9 to cleave the target plasmid with high efficiency, while the first sgRNA didn't work in all the experiments we designed. When we used the CRISPR/cas9 system to eliminate the pCE1 mega-virulence plasmid from B. cereus BC307 by simply changing the sgRNA, we also obtained a plasmid-cured isogenic strain at a very high elimination rate (69%). The sterilization efficiency of B. anthracis was about 93%, which is similar to the efficiency of plasmid curing, and there was no significant difference in the efficiency of among the scissors plasmids containing single sgRNA, targeting multi-sites, or single-site targeting and the two tandem sgRNA. This simple and effective curing method, which is applicable to B. cereus group strains, provides a new way to study these bacteria and their virulence profiles.
A compact, high-efficiency grating coupler is demonstrated for interfacing a silicon waveguide and a perfectly-vertical fiber at O-band. The grating lies on a tilted silicon membrane for minimizing the reflections. Circular grating lines are adopted to shorten the overall device length to about 60μm. 57% peak coupling efficiency and >28nm 1-dB coupling bandwidth are obtained experimentally. Back reflections of 1% to the silicon waveguide and the single mode fiber are theoretically estimated. The processing flow to realize the proposed structure is discussed in detail. The fabrication control over the tilted angle of the silicon membrane is investigated. The approach by applying an oxide cladding to improve the stability of the membrane is also introduced. The present grating coupler is compatible to common fabrication processes for silicon photonic chips.
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