5-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA) is an important prodrug in topical photodynamic therapy (PDT). Its photosensitization is mediated through protoporphyrin Ⅸ (PpⅨ). The ALA-related drug development and application optimization promote a series of products and techniques that expanded the clinical applications of topical PDT. PpⅨ fluorescence visualization not only plays an important role in topical PDT, it is also useful in fluorescence-guided surgery for bladder cancer and gliomas. This review will provide an overview on some progress in ALA, ALA esters and PpⅨ applications.

As a new type of fluorescent nanomaterial, gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) are molecular aggregates composed of several to about one hundred gold atoms. Due to its simple preparation, excellent optical properties and low toxicity, AuNCs have been widely used in the field of biosensing in recent years. This review first briefly introduces the commonly used template method and its advantages for the preparation of AuNCs using sulfhydryl compounds, dendrimer, peptides and proteins, oligonucleotide DNA, etc. as templates. This review describes the UV absorption, fluorescence and electrochemical properties of AuNCs. After that, the application of fluorescent AuNCs-based biosensors in the detection of biomacromolecules and small molecules is summarized. Finally, the challenges of AuNCs in the field of biosensing are analyzed and their applications are prospected.

In this paper, L-cysteine (L-Cys) modified Fe3O4-coated titanium dioxide (Fe3O4@TiO2/L-Cys) composite nanoparticles were prepared by coprecipitation method.The composite nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The effects of composite nanoparticles on PDT inactivation of HL60 cells in vitro were discussed.The inactivation mechanism of PDT was preliminarily explored. The results showed that Fe3O4@TiO2/L-Cys composite nanoparticles had high dispersibility, good biocompatibility, lower dark toxicity to cells, and could effectively enhance the targeting and improve the inactivation efficiency of PDT. When the irradiation dose was 18 J/cm2 at 410 nm, the overall PDT efficiency was the highest when the ratio of titanium dioxide to Fe3O4 was 1∶3. The PDT inactivation efficiency of Fe3O4@TiO2/L-Cys was 69.36%.

There are few reports on the function of transforming growth factor β-activated kinase 1(TAK1) in innate immune response in fish. To explore the role of zebrafish TAK1(Danio rerio TAK1, DrTAK1) in innate immune, a new splicing isoforms of Drtak1 has been cloned and characterized in this study. The open reading frame (ORF) of the Drtak1 has 1 737 nt, which can encode 578 amino acids. DrTAK1 includes a N-terminal serine/threonine protein kinases (S/TKc) and a C-terminal coiled-coil region. The results of immunofluorescence showed that DrTAK1 is a cytoplasmic protein. Over-expression of DrTAK1 in EPC cells down-regulates the activity of IFN promoter in luciferase reporter assay in EPC cells. However when co-transferred with zebrafish IRF7, the DrTAK1 can obviously promote the IFN-activation ability of IRF7. The data in this study showed that the DrTAK1 positively regulated IRF7-mediated innate immune responses for the first time in zebrafish, and it laid the foundation for subsequent DrTAK1 research.

In this paper, the in vitro permeation efficiency of two commonly used transmembrane peptides TAT and R9, the effects on cells and the transmembrane efficiencies of different organs in mice were compared. The non-specific transmembrane peptides TAT and R9 are short peptides of 11 amino acids and 9 amino acids, respectively, which are able to efficiently enter cell through cell membrane. In this study, the fusion proteins TAT-EGFP and R9-EGFP were purified, and the lung cancer cells were treated with the same concentration of active TAT-EGFP and R9-EGFP. The transmembrane activity and efficiency of the two were observed and compared. To explore whether the transmembrane peptide has an effect on the cells, the TAT-EGFP and R9-EGFP active peptides were injected intraperitoneally into mice to study the target positions of the two in vivo, and the distribution of the effect organs of the two membranes was compared. The results showed that the two fusion proteins TAT-EGFP and R9-EGFP were able to effectively penetrate the membrane, and the two transmembrane peptides had less effect on breast cancer cells. In vivo experiments showed that the two transmembrane peptides were distributed in the heart, liver, spleen, lung and kidney organs. R9 was mainly enriched in the kidney and liver of mice, and TAT was enriched in the six organs studied. The two cell-penetrating peptides can pass through the blood-brain barrier to reach the brain. Relatively speaking, TAT has a better transmembrane effect in mice and gives more fluorescence enrichment, and R9 overall membrane penetration is weaker. Through the analysis of this study, the cell safety concentration of two transmembrane peptides and the transmembrane ability of living cells were compared, which provided basic data and a guidance for the rational and effective selection and use of TAT and R9 transmembrane peptides in subsequent experiments.

Constructing functional nanoprobes with high conversion efficiency is the key to promote the development of photoacoustic molecular imaging. With the development of photoacoustic molecular imaging, self-assembled nanoprobes with nonlinear enhancement of photoacoustic conversion efficiency have gradually become a research hotspot. However, quantitative studies on nonlinear enhancement of nanoprobes have not been reported. In this work, by taking gold nanospheres as an example, the nonlinear photothermal and photoacoustic effects induced by self-assembly of metal nanoprobes are quantitatively investigated by finite element simulation, and the enhancement rule of photoacoustic effects of self-assembly nanoprobes is revealed, which lays a theoretical foundation for the construction of photoacoustic self-assembly nanoprobes with high conversion efficiency.

The Arabidopsis peroxisome generate protein mutant pex5 and the wild type was utilized to study the roles of PEX5 in the stress resistance of Arabidopsis roots. The results showed that the root length of pex5 was significantly shorter than that of the wild type in MS medium. At the same time, the height of Arabidopsis pex5 mutant was also lower than that of the wild type, indicating that the deletion of PEX5 affected the root and stem growth of Arabidopsis. When the pex5 was cultured in MS medium with NaCl or mannitol, the inhibition of germination and root elongation was significantly stronger than that of the wild type, and the SOD and POD activity of the mutant seedlings was significantly lower than that of the wild type, which indicated that PEX5 affected the stress resistance of Arabidopsis roots. This study provides an important reference for understanding the regulation mechanism of PEX5 in plant stress resistance.

The early body color formation of red-white crucian carp was observed. Melanocytes firstly appear before fertilization, then xanthophores happen and later iridophore appear. And then, the body colour of red-white crucian carp changes from dark grey to red-orange after about 3 months old. the full-length cDNAs for Slc7a11 and Pnp4a were isolated. Our results revealed that the full-length Pnp4a cDNA contains 1 535 bp, with an open reading frame of 783 nucleotides, which encodes a deduced protein of 291 amino acids, coding for a deduced sequence alignment showed that crucian carp Pnp4a shares high levels of identity with those from Danio rerio (95.1% ). The full-length Slc7a11 cDNA contains 1 782 bp, with an open reading frame of 1488 nucleotides, which encodes a deduced protein of 496 amino acids. The amino acid sequence alignment demonstrated that the red crucian carp Slc7a11 protein shared a sequence identity of 93.7% with Danio rerio, Oryzias latipes.The expression of Mitfa,Tyr,Slc7a11 and Pnp4a in three kinds of different color crucian carp embryos and adult tissues were detected by RT-PCR. The results showed that the red-white crucian carp has the same melanin decay process as the red crucian carp.Amino acid sequence alignment showed that Pnp4a and Slc7a11of red crucian carp share high identity with those from Cyprinus carpio.The adult skin tissue of the red-white crucian carp was detected the expression of Mitfa and Tyr,so did the adult skin tissue of the red crucian carp.Pnp4a was expressed in different body color development stages and different tissues of different crucian carp.Slc7a11 was expressed in different body color development stages of different crucian carp. However,it was not detected in different adult skin tissues of different crucian carp.

In our previous study, we found that small heat shock proteins (HSPs) in Antheraea pernyi have an important role in response to biotic stress. In order to investigate more function and mechanism of HSP in insect immunity, we report the cloning of Hsp20.1 from the Chinese oak silkworm A.pernyi (Aphsp20.1). The open reading frame of ApHSP20.1 encodes 187 amino acid protein, sharing 75% amino acid sequence identity with the other ApHSP. And phylogenetic analysis reveals that ApHSP20.1 is closely related to other known lipidopteran HSP20 genes. A quantitative real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) analysis indicated that Aphsp20.1was expressed in all tested tissues and was induced by exposure to the microbes Escherichia coli and Micrococcus luteus.Notably, the recombinant ApHSP20.1 protein exhibited significant antimicrobial activity.Taken together, these results suggest that ApHSP20.1 might play an important role in the response to biotic stresses and in immune reactions.

In order to explore the genetic basis for the biosynthesis of anthocyanin antioxidant, the transcriptome of Paeonia jishanensis was sequenced by Illumina NextSeqTM500 platform. This results showed that 39 450 unigenes were found by assembly and 4 106 SSR were identified in 3 563 unigenes. All of unigenes were annotated via different databases. 29 420 unigenes were annotated in Swiss Prot database, and 11 unigenes was related to the anthocyanin biosynthesis process, 22 unigenes related to flavonoids and 15 unigenes related to isoflavonoid biosynthesis; NR database annotation were highest at 100%, and 7 unigenes related to anthocyanin and 12 unigenes related to flavonoids biosynthesis;24 291 unigenes were annotated in GO database and divided into the process of 53 function groups; 38 238 unigenes were annotated in eggNOG database and classified into 26 functional categories, which involve processing and developments of plants; 5 709 unigenes were annotated in KEGG database and grouped into 6 functional categories of 42 metabolism pathways, 25 unigenes involved in the biosynthesis of anthocyanin. This study indicated that some genes and SSR loci which had association with biosynthesis of flavonoids and anthocyanins were identifed. It can provide a foundation for the further researching on metabolic pathways of anthocyanins.

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) belongs to the cytokine and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) superfamily and plays an important role in embryo morphogenesis and organ formation. However, it currently lacks various antibodies to the BMP signaling pathway factor SAX. In this paper, the total RNA was extracted from Drosophila embryos, and the cDNA library was obtained by reverse transcription. The SAX gene fragment was obtained by PCR using the cDNA as a template, and the fragment was ligated into pCAGGS-P7 to construct a recombinant plasmid pCAGGS-P7-sax. BALB/C mice were immunized with plasmid DNA immunoassay to prepare polyclonal antibodies against Drosophila SAX protein. Further analysis showed that the constructed eukaryotic expression recombinant plasmid pCAGGS-P7-sax DNA had good immunogenicity, and the anti-serum antibody titer obtained after immunization of mice reached 1∶100. Western blot and Drosophila embryo immunofluorescence assay showed that antiserum can specifically recognize SAX protein. The successful preparation of Drosophila SAX antibody laid the foundation for further study of the role of sax gene and BMP signal in Drosophila heart development.

One or more life stages of most agricultural pests with short life cycles can be subjected to heat wave stress because of substantially increased frequency and duration of climate change. The ecological effects of heat waves on small insects depend on the thermal tolerance of different life stages. Therefore, analyzing thermal tolerances of insects in their life stages at specific ages is of great significance for understanding the ecological impact of frequent heat waves and climate warming. A worldwide important pest on cruciferous vegetables, diamondback moth Plutella xylostella was used as the test material, the basal thermal tolerance and induced thermal tolerance of 4th larvae and adult were measured, continuous moderate high temperature thermal tolerance of the 1st and 3rd larvae combined with different high temperatures ［(31±1),(33±1),(35±1) ℃］ with exposure time (3,6,9,12 d) were also measured in this study. The results indicated that larvae and adult showed different basal and induced thermal tolerances, larvae with weak basal thermal tolerance showed stronger induced thermal tolerance. Larvae in different life stages showed different survival rates under continuous several days of moderate high temperature stress, larvae have lower survival rate in early life stages than in later life stages. Moreover, this difference is particularly obvious at higher temperatures. The differences of thermal tolerances in different stages of insects have important ecological significance for the maintenance of population. The most agricultural pests have a mixed age structure in their field populations, survival of thermal resistant developmental stage of pests after heat wave will ensure the populations can still survive and reproduce.

Growth and development were assessed in 2 889 children aged 3 months~16 years who underwent physical examination without symptoms in Changsha. Serum Helicobacter pylori (H.pylori) IgG was detected by colloidal gold method. The results showed that a total of 2 889 children, 1 652 boys and 1 237 girls, were tested, among which 765(26.4%) were positive for H.pylori infection, including 432 (26.2%) boys and 333 (26.9%) girls. The prevalence rate of H.pylori in all age groups was 31.8% at the age of 3 months~1 years old, 31.4% at the age of 1~3 years old, 18.9% at the age of 3~6 years old, and 15.4% above the age of 6 years old, respectively. Chi-square test and non-parametric test were used. There was no significant difference in H.pylori infection rate between the two groups of different genders (P>0.05). There was no difference in the infection rate of H.pylori between group 3 months~1 years old and group 1 to 3 years old, and between group 3 to 6 years old and group above 6 years old. Conversely, there was significant difference between the other two groups. There was no difference between the H.pylori positive and H.pylori negative groups in the body length or height (P>0.05).Nevertheless, the weights of the children in the H.pylori negative group were higher than those in the H.pylori positive group (P0.05). This indicates that there is no difference in the infection of H.pylori in different genders. The infection of H.pylori in children does not increase the incidence of severe growth disorders such as short stature and malnutrition, however, it still exerts certain levels of influence on the growth and development of children’s body length/height and weight.