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Prostate cancer (PCa) remains a leading cause of mortality among men in the United States and Western Europe. The molecular mechanism of PCa pathogenesis has not been fully elucidated. In the present study, the expression profile of E2F transcription factor 7 (E2F7) in PCa was examined using immunohistochemistry and reverse transcription-quantitative PCR, whilst cell cycle progression and apoptosis were determined using fluorescent cell activated sorting techniques. Cell viability was measured using Cell Counting Kit-8 in loss-and gain-of-function studies. Dual-luciferase reporter assay was used to verify if E2F7 was one of the potential targets of miR-30c. The staining score of E2F7 of PCa tissues was found to be notably higher compared with that of adjacent normal tissues. Suppression of E2F7 expression in PCa cell lines led to significantly reduced proliferation rates, increased proportion of cells in the G 1 phase of the cell cycle and higher apoptotic rates compared with those in negative control groups. Dual-luciferase reporter assay revealed E2F7 to be one of the binding targets of microRNA (miR)-30c. In addition, transfection of miR-30c mimics into PCa cells resulted in reduced cell viability, increased proportion of cells in the G 1 phase and higher apoptotic rates. By contrast, transfection with the miR-30c inhibitor led to lower apoptosis rates of PCa cells compared with negative control groups, whilst E2F7 siRNA co-transfection reversed stimulatory effects of miR-30c inhibitors on cell viability. In addition, the expression of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 were found to be upregulated by transfection with either E2F7 siRNA or miR-30c mimics into PCa cells. In conclusion, the present study suggested that E2F7 may be positively associated with PCa cell proliferation by inhibiting p21, whereas E2F7 is in turn under regulation by miR-30c. These observations suggest the miR-30c/E2F7/p21 axis to be a viable therapeutic target for PCa.

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Flavonoids are key components of licorice plant that directly affect its medicinal quality. Importantly, the MYB family of transcription factors serves to regulate the synthesis of flavonoids in plants. The MYB transcription factors represent one of the largest families of transcription factors in plants and play important roles in the process of plant growth and development. MYB gene expression is induced by a number of plant hormones, including the lipid-based hormone jasmonate (JA). Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) is an endogenous plant growth regulator that can induce the JA signaling pathway, which functions to regulate the synthesis of secondary metabolites, including flavonoids. In this study, MeJA was added to licorice cell suspensions, and RNA-seq analysis was performed to identify the differentially expressed genes. As a result, the MYB transcription factors GlMYB4 and GlMYB88 were demonstrated to respond significantly to MeJA induction. Subsequently, the GlMYB4 and GlMYB88 protein were shown to localize to the cell nucleus, and it was verified that GlMYB4 and GlMYB88 could positively regulate the synthesis of flavonoids in licorice cells. Overall, this research helps illustrate the molecular regulation of licorice flavonoid biosynthesis induced by MeJA.

Based on the summary of existing pounding force analytical models, an updated pounding force analysis method is proposed by introducing viscoelastic constitutive model and contact mechanics method. Traditional Kelvin viscoelastic pounding force model can be expanded to 3-parameter linear viscoelastic model by separating classic pounding model parameters into geometry parameters and viscoelastic material parameters. Two existing pounding examples, the poundings of steel-to-steel and concrete-toconcrete, are recalculated by utilizing the proposed method. Afterwards, the calculation results are compared with other pounding force models. The results show certain accuracy in proposed model. The relative normalized errors of steel-to-steel and concreteto-concrete experiments are 19.8% and 12.5%, respectively. Furthermore, a steel-to-polymer pounding example is calculated, and the application of the proposed method in vibration control analysis for pounding tuned mass damper (TMD) is simulated consequently. However, due to insufficient experiment details, the proposed model can only give a rough trend for both single pounding process and vibration control process. Regardless of the cheerful prospect, the study in this paper is only the first step of pounding force calculation. It still needs a more careful assessment of the model performance, especially in the presence of inelastic response.

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