Nanoscale Analysis of Polymer Interfaces by Energy‐Filtering Transmission Electron Microscopy

Summary: Energy‐filtering transmission electron microscopy (EFTEM) was employed for the analysis of polymer‐polymer interfaces. To attain imaging and spectral analyses with a spatial resolution of 10 nm, problems arising in the EFTEM analysis for polymer specimens were investigated. Interfaces in poly(methyl methacrylate)/polystyrene‐co‐polyacrylonitrile random copolymer (PMMA/SAN) bilayer films annealed at different temperatures were analyzed by means of elemental mapping and Image‐EELS on EFTEM and the effect of the annealing temperature on the interfacial structures was also investigated.

     

The effects of inflammatory cytokines on steroidogenic acute regulatory protein expression in macrophages

Objective: To investigate the expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) in macrophages and the effects of inflammatory cytokines on StAR expression. Methods: The macrophages isolated from ApoE knockout mice and C57BL/6J mice and RAW264.7 cells (a cell line from mouse macrophage. ATCC Number: TIB-71^TM) were cultured in DMEM containing 10% fetal bovine serum. RAW264.7 cells were treated with different inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IFN-γ and TGF-β1) and 8-Br-cAMP, a cAMP analog. RT-PCR and Western blot analysis were applied to evaluate the effects of inflammatory cytokines on StAR expression. Results: RT-PCR and Western blot analysis demonstrated the expression of StAR in the macrophages isolated from ApoE knockout mice, C57BL/6J mice and RAW264.7 cells. Proinflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IFN-γ significantly decreased StAR mRNA and protein levels in RAW264.7 cells. The inhibition was dose- and time-dependent. In contrast, anti-inflammatory cytokine TGF-β1 increased StAR mRNA and protein levels. At 1:15 molecular ratio, TGF-β1 blocked the down-regulation of StAR expression mediated by TNF-α. cAMP also induced StAR expression in RAW264.7 cells. When the cells were co-treated with 8-Br-cAMP and TNF-α, 8-Br-cAMP failed to induce StAR expression. Conclusion: Our results provide interesting evidence that inflammatory cytokines regulate StAR expression in macrophages. Received 12 August 2006; returned for revision 28 September 2006; returned for final revision 28 May 2007; accepted by M. Katori 22 June 2007     

类金刚石薄膜蛋白吸附与碳相成分关系的定量分析研究

运用灰色系统理论中的 T型关联度分析方法 ,对类金刚石 (DL C)薄膜、富石墨相 DL C薄膜和富金刚石相 DL C薄膜三种 DL C薄膜进行了碳相成分对其白蛋白 (HSA)、纤维蛋白原 (HFG)、免疫球蛋白 (Ig G)三种血浆蛋白吸附量影响的定量分析研究。合理地解释了三种材料蛋白吸附量随碳相成分变化的实验结果 ,并得出如下重要的分析结论 :(1)石墨和 C- H相对 HSA的吸附影响较大 ,随着二者的增加 ,HSA的吸附量下降 ;(2 )与 HFG吸附有较强关联的碳相成分是 DL C相和 C- O相 ,前者呈负相关 ,后者为正相关 ;(3)各碳相成分对 Ig G的吸附均有性质不尽相同的影响 ,但程度有限 ,且彼此间相差不大 ;(4 ) DL C碳相具有增强 HSA吸附、抑制 HFG、Ig G吸附的双重功效 ,其对 DL C薄膜血液相容性的影响远较其它碳相成分更为重要。     

桡神经及其深支的血供

在25具成人尸体(50例)上,观测了桡神经及其深支的血供。桡神经的营养动脉平均为4.36±0.26支,营养动脉和来源动脉的外径平均为0.38±0.08mm和1.65±0.05mm。桡神经深支的营养动脉平均为1.72±0.16支,营养动脉和来源动脉的外径平均为0.29±0.01mm和1.91±0.07mm。     

Adhesion contact dynamics of HepG2 cells on galactose-immobilized substrates

The specific recognition between asialoglycoprotein receptor and galactose ligand at cell-substrate interfaces has been shown to mediate hepatocyte adhesion and maintain liver specific functions of hepatocytes. Conventionally, the success of hepatocyte attachment on engineered tissue scaffold is inferred from the degree of two-dimensional cell spreading that is measured by transmitted light microscopy. However, the actual contact mechanics and adhesion strength of hepatocytes during two-dimensional cell spreading has not been elucidated due to lack of biophysical probe. In this study, a novel biophysical technique known as confocal reflectance interference contrast microscopy (C-RICM) in conjunction with phase contrast microscopy is utilized to probe the adhesion dynamics, contact mechanics and two-dimensional spreading kinetics of HepG2 cells on galactose immobilized and collagen gel coated substrates. C-RICM demonstrates that HepG2 cells form strong adhesion contacts with both galactose-immobilized surfaces and collagen gel coated substrates. Moreover, HepG2 cells maintain their compact shapes in the presence of asialoglycoprotein receptor-mediated recognition while they become exceedingly spread under integrin-mediated adhesion on collagen gel coated substrate. The initial rate of adhesion contact formation and the steady-state adhesion energy of HepG2 cell population are highest on substrate conjugated with galactose ligand via a longer spacer. The adhesion dynamics and final adhesion energy of HepG2 cells depends both on the type of ligand-receptor interaction and the length of spacer between the ligand and substrate. Most importantly, new biophysical insights into the initial hepatocyte attachment that are critical for hepatocyte culture are provided through the decomposition of two-dimensional spreading and adhesion contact formation on bio-functional substrates.     

A HIT-trapping strategy for rapid generation of reversible and conditional alleles using a universal donor

Targeted mutagenesis in model organisms is key for gene functional annotation and biomedical research. Despite technological advances in gene editing by the CRISPR-Cas9 systems, rapid and efficient introduction of site-directed mutations remains a challenge in large animal models. Here, we developed a robust and flexible insertional mutagenesis strategy, homology-independent targeted trapping (HIT-trapping), which is generic and can efficiently target-trap an endogenous gene of interest independent of homology arm and embryonic stem cells. Further optimization and equipping the HIT-trap donor with a site-specific DNA inversion mechanism enabled one-step generation of reversible and conditional alleles in a single experiment. As a proof of concept, we successfully created mutant alleles for 21 disease-related genes in primary porcine fibroblasts with an average knock-in frequency of 53.2%, a great improvement over previous approaches. The versatile HIT-trapping strategy presented here is expected to simplify the targeted generation of mutant alleles and facilitate large-scale mutagenesis in large mammals such as pigs.

Following the completion of animal genome sequencing projects, rapid and efficient mutagenesis strategies are needed for analyzing gene function and for creating human disease models. Gene trapping is a high-throughput mutagenesis strategy whereby random vector insertion can be achieved across the mouse genome. A typical gene-trap vector contains a promoter-less reporter/selection gene flanked by an upstream splice acceptor (SA) and a downstream poly(A) signal. Upon insertion into an intron of a gene, the vector both inactivates the trapped gene and enables the gene-specific expression of a reporter gene (Gossler et al. 1989; Stanford et al. 2001). To date, gene-trapping approaches have been successfully applied toward large-scale mutagenesis in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) and generation of gene knockout mice (Skarnes et al. 2004). The main drawback of random gene trapping is that gene-trap alleles are not specifically engineered to target genes of interest in advance. Therefore, methods to streamline the introduction of predesigned, site-specific modifications into the genome by homologous recombination would represent a significant technological advance. Previously, a hybrid approach combining gene targeting and gene trapping (targeted trapping) enabled mutation of expressed genes in mESCs with high efficiency, using a gene-trap construct flanked by homologous sequences of the target locus (Friedel et al. 2005). Also, homologous recombination is commonly used for creating conditional alleles, which is essential to avoid embryonic lethality and to study the stage- and tissue-specific functions of genes (Branda and Dymecki 2004). However, both standard gene trapping and targeted trapping are only suitable for genes expressed in embryonic stem (ES) cells. Furthermore, construction of targeting donor vectors with homology arms is labor intensive and costly, and the low efficiency of homologous recombination is also a rate-limiting step for gene targeting in mammalian genomes.Recently, by taking advantage of precise genomic double-strand breaks (DSBs) created by the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated protein 9 (Cas9) system (Ran et al. 2013; Doudna and Charpentier 2014; Hsu et al. 2014), homology-directed repair (HDR) efficiency was substantially enhanced (Porteus and Carroll 2005), and even donors with short homology arms (Orlando et al. 2010) or single-stranded DNA oligonucleotides (Chen et al. 2011; Quadros et al. 2017) were found to be compatible with site-specific integration. However, each targeting donor for HDR still needs to be customized with gene-specific homology sequences. Because of the lack of ES cells for certain animals such as pigs, sheep, and cattle, the genome must be edited either in a zygote embryo or in a somatic cell for somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) (Reddy et al. 2020). It is still not feasible to achieve large-scale insertional mutagenesis including conditional knockouts in these important species with random gene trapping or HDR-based methods. Also, the problem of genetic mosaicism in embryo editing remains unresolved (Mehravar et al. 2019), prompting a need for technological advances to accelerate genetic modification in somatic cells.Alternatively, the generally more efficient nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway has been exploited for site-specific insertion of exogenous DNA by simultaneous cleavage of both donor plasmid and genome using programmable nucleases (Cristea et al. 2013; Maresca et al. 2013; Brown et al. 2016; Suzuki et al. 2016; Sawatsubashi et al. 2018). In contrast to HDR-based strategies, NHEJ-mediated insertions do not require gene-specific homology arms, enabling diverse sites to be targeted with a universal donor vector. Therefore, we speculated that a gene-trap cassette could be inserted into a specific locus easily through this mechanism in any cell type.Here, by combining NHEJ-mediated knock-in and gene trapping, we developed a strategy for targeted mutagenesis, especially in somatic cells with low HDR activity, referred to as HIT-trapping. By using a universal donor, this strategy allows us to (1) create null alleles, (2) produce a fluorescent reporter signal that could potentially allow cells with null alleles to be identified very quickly, and (3) produce reversible and conditional alleles that would be very helpful to have in most animal models but are often cumbersome to create.     

Synergistic antimicrobial effect of cefotaxime and minocycline on proinflammatory cytokine levels in a murine model of Vibrio vulnificus infection.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Vibrio vulnificus causes primary bacteremia and necrotizing wound infection, leading to high morbidity and mortality in humans. This study aimed to evaluate the antimicrobial effect of cefotaxime and minocycline on proinflammatory cytokine levels in a murine model of V. vulnificus infection. METHODS: We investigated the dynamics of proinflammatory cytokines and their modulation by antimicrobial agents using a murine model of V. vulnificus infection. The change in cytokine levels was followed over a time course to identify the antimicrobial activity of the drugs against V. vulnificus. BALB/c female mice were challenged with an intraperitoneal infection using a clinical invasive isolate of Vv05191, and their cytokine levels were assayed over various time points. RESULTS: Serum levels of tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin (IL)-1 beta, and IL-6 post-infection were found to be inoculum dose-dependent and positively correlated to the subsequent fatality rate in the infected mice. With an inoculum of 6.6 x 10(6) colony-forming units and intraperitoneal administration of cefotaxime, minocycline, or both, the serum and peritoneal fluid cytokine levels increased and then declined gradually. Comparison of the 3 antimicrobial regimens revealed that the magnitude of reduction in cytokine levels was greatest in mice treated with cefotaxime-minocycline combination. Moreover, the peritoneal fluid cytokine level in the combination group was significantly lower than that in the groups treated with minocycline or cefotaxime alone. CONCLUSIONS: The current results support the superiority of the combination therapy in treating invasive V. vulnificus infections.     

Ex vivo localization of the mouse saposin C activation region for acid beta-glucosidase

Saposin C is a biological activator of acid beta-glucosidase (GCase), the lysosomal hydrolase with activity towards glucosylceramide (GC). In addition, saposin C possesses a functional domain that determines the in vitro and ex vivo neuritogenic effects of prosaposin, the precursor of saposins A, B, C, and D. The domains for enzymatic activation and neuritogenic function segregate in vitro, respectively, to the carboxyl- and amino-terminal halves of human and mouse saposin C. A chimeric mouse saposin C(1-8)B(8-28)C(30-80) was created to obliterate the neuritogenic region by substituting amino acids 9-29 of saposin C with amino acids 8-28 of saposin B. This saposin showed normal in vitro enzymatic activation effects toward GCase, but no neuritogenic activity. An altered prosaposin was made to contain the chimeric saposin C region. Expression of this altered or wild-type prosaposin was driven by the PGK-1 promoter as a transgene in prosaposin knock-out mice. In cultured fibroblasts from such mice, expressed saposins localized to the lysosomal compartments. Metabolic lipid labeling using L-[3-(14)C]serine showed retention or clearance of GC in prosaposin deficient or transgene reconstituted cells, respectively. In addition, sulfatide catabolism, that requires saposin B and arylsulfatase, was also normalized in prosaposin KO cells reconstituted with the transgenes. These data show that the transgenic prosaposins were expressed and processed to functional saposins in fibroblasts. These results also show that the enzymatic activation domain is located at carboxyl-terminal half of saposin C and functions only in the context of the general saposin structure.