Chemokines are implicated in the neuroinflammation of several chronic neurodegenerative disorders. However, the precise role of chemokines in neurodegeneration is unknown. Thiamine deficiency (TD) causes abnormal oxidative metabolism in the brain as well as a well-defined microglia activation and neurodegeneration in the submedial thalamus nucleus (SmTN), which are common features of neurodegenerative diseases. We evaluated the role of chemokines in neurodegeneration and the underlying mechanism in a TD model. Among the chemokines examined, TD selectively induced neuronal expression of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) in the SmTN prior to microglia activation and neurodegeneration. The conditioned medium collected from TD-induced neurons caused microglia activation. With a neuron/microglia co-culture system, we showed that MCP-1-induced neurotoxicity required the presence of microglia and exogenous MCP-1 was able to activate microglia and stimulated microglia to produce cytokines. A MCP-1 neutralizing antibody inhibited MCP-1-induced microglia activation and neuronal death in culture and in the thalamus. MCP-1 knock-out mice were resistant to TD-induced neuronal death in SmTN. TD selectively induced the accumulation of reactive oxygen species in neurons, and antioxidants blocked TD-induced MCP-1 expression. Together, our results indicated an induction of neuronal MCP-1 during mild impairment of oxidative metabolism caused microglia recruitment/activation, which exacerbated neurodegeneration.

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Molecular hydrogen (H2) is a colorless and odorless gas. Studies have shown that H2 inhalation has the therapeutic effects in many animal studies and clinical trials, and its application is recommended in the novel coronavirus pneumonia treatment guidelines in China recently. H2 has a relatively small molecular mass, which helps it quickly spread and penetrate cell membranes to exert a wide range of biological effects. It may play a role in the treatment and prevention of a variety of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases, such as acute pancreatitis, sepsis, respiratory disease, ischemia reperfusion injury diseases, autoimmunity diseases, etc.. H2 is primarily administered via inhalation, drinking H2-rich water, or injection of H2 saline. It may participate in the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity (mitochondrial energy metabolism), immune system regulation, and cell death (apoptosis, autophagy, and pyroptosis) through annihilating excess reactive oxygen species production and modulating nuclear transcription factor. However, the underlying mechanism of H2 has not yet been fully revealed. Owing to its safety and potential efficacy, H2 has a promising potential for clinical use against many diseases. This review will demonstrate the role of H2 in antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and antiapoptotic effects and its underlying mechanism, particularly in coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), providing strategies for the medical application of H2 for various diseases.

Mounting evidence highlights long non‐coding RNAs (lncRNAs) as crucial regulators in multiple types of biological processes and contributing to tumourigenesis. LINC01133, located in chromosome 1q23.2, was a recently identified novel lncRNA with a length of 1154nt. It was involved in the development of colorectal cancer and non‐small cell lung cancer. However, its clinical relevance, biological functions and potential molecular mechanism in breast cancer are still unclear. In this study, we found that the LINC01133 expression was significantly down‐regulated in breast cancer samples and was associated with progression and poor prognosis of breast cancer. Further experiments demonstrated that overexpression of LINC01133 inhibited invasion and metastasis in breast cancer both in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistic investigations revealed that LINC01133 repressed SOX4 expression by recruiting EZH2 to SOX4 promoter. Moreover, rescue experiments further confirmed that LINC01133 functional acted as an anti‐oncogene, at least partly, via repressing SOX4 in breast cancer. Taken together, these findings imply that LINC01133 could serve as a novel prognostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target for breast cancer.

The isoscaling behavior is investigated using the isotopic/isobaric yields from the equilibrated thermal source which is prepared by the lattice gas model (LGM) for lighter systems with A = 36. The isoscaling parameters α and -β are observed to drop with temperature for the LGM with the asymmetric nucleon-nucleon potential. However, the isoscaling parameters do not show temperature dependence for the LGM with the symmetric nucleon-nucleon potential. The relative neutron or proton density shows a nearly linear relation with the N/Z ( neutron to proton ratio ) of system. PACS numbers: 25.70.Pq, 24.10.Pa, 05.70.JkIsoscaling has been observed in a variety of reactions under the conditions of statistical emission and equal temperature recently by Tsang et al [1,2,3]. This kind of scaling means that the ratio R 21 (N,Z) of the yields of a given fragment (N,Z) exhibits an exponential dependence on N and Z when these fragments are produced in two reactions with different isospin asymmetry, but at the same temperature. Experimentally the isoscaling has been explored in various reaction mechanisms, ranging from the evaporation [1], fission [4,5] and deep inelastic reaction at low energies to the projectile fragmentation [6,7] and multi-fragmentation at intermediate energy [1,8,9]. While, the isoscaling has been extensively examined in different theoretical frameworks, ranging from dynamical model, such as Anti-symmetrical Molecular Dynamics model [10] and BUU model [8], to statistical models, such as Expansion Emission Source Model and statistical multi-fragmentation model [2,3,11,12]. From all these reaction mechanisms and models, it looks that isoscaling is a robust probe to relate with the symmetrical term of the nuclear equation of state.Typically, the investigations of isoscaling focused on yields of light fragments with Z=2-8 originating from deexcitation of massive hot systems produced using reactions of mass symmetric projectile and target at intermediate energies, such as 112,124 Sn + 112,124 Sn in Michigan State University (MSU) data [1,2,3] or by reactions of high-energy light particle with massive target nucleus [11,13]. In a recent article [6], the isoscaling using the heavy projectile residue from the reactions of 25 MeV/nucleon 86 Kr projectiles with 124 Sn, 112 Sn and 64 Ni, 58 Ni targets which was performed at Texas A&M University (TAMU) and the isoscaling phenomenon on the full sample of fragments emitted by the hot thermally equilibrated quasi-projectiles with mass A = 20-30 are also reported [7].

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Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) results of the nucleon-nucleon correlation function have been presented for the nuclear reactions with neutron-rich projectiles (Be isotopes) using an event-generator, the Isospin-Dependent Quantum Molecular Dynamics model. We explore that the relationship between the binding energy per nucleon of the projectiles and the strength of the neutron-proton HBT at small relative momentum. Moreover, we reveal the relationship between the single neutron separation energy and the strength of the halo neutron-proton HBT. Results show that neutron-proton HBT results are sensitive to binding energy or separation energy.