Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth most prevalent cancer and the third leading cause of cancer‐related deaths worldwide. The fate of a cell is determined by the balance between the processes of fission and fusion that constantly occur in the mitochondria of cells. We previously showed that overexpression of Mitofusin‐2 can induce apoptosis in HCC cells by triggering an influx of Ca2+ into the mitochondria from the ER. The function of Mitofusin‐2 has been studied extensively, but the mechanism underlying the post‐transcriptional regulation of Mitofusin‐2 has not been elucidated. In the present study, we aimed to identify the mechanism of Mitofusin‐2 regulation in HCC. We demonstrated that Mitofusin‐2 is a direct target of miR‐761, which was found to be upregulated in HCC tissues. Furthermore, a miR‐761 inhibitor impaired mitochondrial function by upregulating Mitofusin‐2 and effectively repressed tumor growth and metastasis both in vivo and in vitro. Our findings provide new insight into the mechanism underlying Mitofusin‐2 regulation and the potential role of miR‐761 in HCC, making it a potential candidate for use in HCC therapy in the future.

& Key message Geometric morphometric analyses (GMMs) of the leaf shape can distinguish two congeneric oak species Quercus dentata Thunberg and Quercus aliena Blume in sympatric areas. & Contexts High genetic and morphological variation in different Quercus species hinder efforts to distinguish them. In China, Q. dentata and Q. aliena are generally sympatrically distributed in warm temperate forests, and share some leaf morphological characteristics. & Aims The aim of this study was to use the morphometric methods to discriminate these sympatric Chinese oaks preliminarily identified from molecular markers. & Methods Three hundred sixty-seven trees of seven sympatric Q. dentata and Q. aliena populations were genetically assigned to one of the two species or hybrids using Bayesian clustering analysis based on nSSR. This grouping served as a priori classification of the trees. Shapes of 1835 leaves from the 367 trees were analyzed in terms of 13 characters (landmarks) by GMMs. Correlations between environmental and leaf morphology parameters were studied using linear regression analyses. & Results The two species were efficiently discriminated by the leaf morphology analyses (96.9 and 95.9% of sampled Q. aliena trees and Q. dentata trees were correctly identified), while putative hybrids between the two species were found to be morphologically intermediate. Moreover, we demonstrated that the leaf morphological variations of Q. aliena, Q. dentata, and their putative hybrids are correlated with environmental factors, possibly because the variation of leaf morphology is part of the response to different habitats and environmental disturbances. & Conclusion GMMs were able to correctly classify individuals from the two species preliminary identified as Q. dentata or Q. aliena by nSSR. The high degree of classification accuracy provided by this approach may be exploited to discriminate other problematic species and highlight its utility in plant ecology and evolution studies.

No abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of primary liver cancer, accounting for one-sixth of all malignant tumors, and the mortality rate of HCC ranks second among all cancer-related deaths. Increasing evidence has recently shown that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in cancer occurrence and progression, including HCC. Cancer susceptibility candidate 15 (CASC15), a lncRNA, has been reported to be involved in melanoma progression and phenotype switching. However, the function of CASC15 in human HCC is still unknown. In the present study, we evaluated expression of CASC15 and its potential functions in HCC. The expression of CASC15 in HCC tissues was quantitated by the reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction, which showed that CASC15 was overexpressed in 59% (48/82) of HCC tissues compared with corresponding adjacent normal tissues, and the CASC15 expression level was significantly correlated with metastasis (P=0.012), tumor size (P=0.037), and TNM stage (P=0.013). Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that high CASC15 expression was associated with poor prognosis in HCC patients (P<0.05). Moreover, a knockdown model of CASC15 was established, which showed that CASC15 significantly impaired HCC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. CASC15 knockdown also induced cell apoptosis in vitro and impaired tumor growth in vivo. In conclusion, CASC15 plays an important role in the progression of HCC, acting as an oncogene. High expression of CASC15 is correlated with a poor prognosis, suggesting that CASC15 may be a predictive biomarker of HCC.

Gemcitabine (GEM) alone and GEM-based chemotherapy are the preferred regimens for treating advanced unresectable and metastatic pancreatic cancer (PC). However,