ROS-Mediated Anti-Tumor Effect of Coptidis Rhizoma against Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma Hep3B Cells and Xenografts

Coptidis Rhizoma is the dried rhizome from the Coptis chinensis Franch. that has been shown to have a number of beneficial pharmacological properties including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer effects. However, the anti-cancer effects of Coptidis Rhizoma on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the anti-cancer properties of Coptidis Rhizoma ethanol extract (CR) in HCC Hep3B cells and in a xenograft mouse model. Our results showed that the CR significantly inhibited cell growth and induced apoptosis in Hep3B cells through increased expression of Bcl-2 associated x-protein (Bax) and cleavage of poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP), reduced expression of Bcl-2, and activated caspases. CR also increased the generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), which caused a loss of mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP, ΔΨm) and activation of the mitochondria-mediated intrinsic apoptosis pathway. Moreover, N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a ROS inhibitor, markedly blocked the effects of CR on apoptotic pathways. CR also induced the expression of light chain 3 (LC3)-I/II, a key autophagy regulator, whereas CR-mediated autophagy was significantly suppressed by NAC. In addition, pre-treatment with NAC perfectly attenuated the inhibition of cell invasion and migration of CR-stimulated Hep3B cells. Furthermore, oral administration of CR suppressed Hep3B tumor growth in xenograft mice without toxicity, alterations to body weight, or changes in hematological and biochemical profiles. Taken together, our findings suggest that CR has anti-tumor effects that result from ROS generation, and may be a potential pharmacological intervention for HCC.     

Effects of environmental factors on corrosion behavior of aluminum

Aluminum, used as a material for heat exchangers in air conditioners, often has problems of leakage of refrigerant on the Al surface due to corrosion. The problems originate from pitting corrosion of the Al in an external environment. To understand corrosion problems, it is necessary to study the corrosion behavior of Al in various environments. In this study, the effects of environmental factors on the corrosion behavior of Al were studied by the surface analysis and electrochemical testing in 3.5 wt% NaCl solutions, with changes of dissolved oxygen, temperature, and concentration of Cl⁻ and S ions. Among the external environmental factors, the presence of oxygen and the increase of Cl⁻ ion concentration do not significantly affect the corrosion potential of Al, leading to an increase of only 1.1 and 6 times, respectively. There was a significant decrease in the corrosion resistance of Al, approximately 40 and 800 times, respectively, with the increase of concentration of S and temperature.     

Korean automatic spacing using pretrained transformer encoder and analysis

Automatic spacing in Korean is used to correct spacing units in a given input sentence. The demand for automatic spacing has been increasing owing to frequent incorrect spacing in recent media, such as the Internet and mobile networks. Therefore, herein, we propose a transformer encoder that reads a sentence bidirectionally and can be pretrained using an out-of-task corpus. Notably, our model exhibited the highest character accuracy (98.42%) among the existing automatic spacing models for Korean. We experimentally validated the effectiveness of bidirectional encoding and pretraining for automatic spacing in Korean. Moreover, we conclude that pretraining is more important than fine-tuning and data size.     

Hepatitis B Virus-Like Particle: Targeted Delivery of Plasmid Expressing Short Hairpin RNA for Silencing the Bcl-2 Gene in Cervical Cancer Cells

Gene therapy research has advanced to clinical trials, but it is hampered by unstable nucleic acids packaged inside carriers and there is a lack of specificity towards targeted sites in the body. This study aims to address gene therapy limitations by encapsidating a plasmid synthesizing a short hairpin RNA (shRNA) that targets the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 gene using truncated hepatitis B core antigen (tHBcAg) virus-like particle (VLP). A shRNA sequence targeting anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 was synthesized and cloned into the pSilencer 2.0-U6 vector. The recombinant plasmid, namely PshRNA, was encapsidated inside tHBcAg VLP and conjugated with folic acid (FA) to produce FA-tHBcAg-PshRNA VLP. Electron microscopy revealed that the FA-tHBcAg-PshRNA VLP has an icosahedral structure that is similar to the unmodified tHBcAg VLP. Delivery of FA-tHBcAg-PshRNA VLP into HeLa cells overexpressing the folate receptor significantly downregulated the expression of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 at 48 and 72 h post-transfection. The 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay demonstrated that the cells’ viability was significantly reduced from 89.46% at 24 h to 64.52% and 60.63%, respectively, at 48 and 72 h post-transfection. As a conclusion, tHBcAg VLP can be used as a carrier for a receptor-mediated targeted delivery of a therapeutic plasmid encoding shRNA for gene silencing in cancer cells.     

Computer‐aided design methodology for linearity enhancement of multiwatt GaN HEMT amplifiers using multiple parallel devices

This article presents a design methodology for linearizing GaN HEMT amplifiers based on splitting a large FET into multiple parallel FETs with same total gate periphery and by biasing them individually. By varying the biases, the magnitude and the phase of the IMD3 components at the output of FET changes. A detailed simulation methodology using commercial microwave CAD software is presented. Simulation results show that by biasing one device in Class AB and other(s) in deep Class AB mode, IMD3 components of parallel FETs can be made out of phase to each other leading to cancellation and improvement in linearity. Three prototype circuits were simulated using (a) a single 5 mm FET (1 × 5 mm), (b) two parallel 2.5 mm FETs (2 × 2.5 mm), and (c) four parallel 1.25 mm FETs (4 × 1.25 mm), for a total gate periphery of 5 mm, over the frequency range of 0.8 to 1.0 GHz. IMD3 improvement up to 20 dBc was achieved with the 4 × 1.25 mm circuit when the FET biases were optimized. Measurement results show improvement in linearity up to 20 dBc for 4 × 1.25 mm circuit. The proposed method improves linearity without a substantial penalty on the power consumption and is straightforward to implement.     

Simultaneous determination of synthetic food additives in kimchi by liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry

Food Science and Biotechnology - A new analytical method was developed for the simultaneous determination of seven food additives (Ponceau 4R, Allura Red AC, Amaranth, 4-hydroxymethyl benzoic acid,...     

Automatic Transformation of Membrane‐Type Electronic Devices into Complex 3D Structures via Extrusion Shear Printing and Thermal Relaxation of Acrylonitrile–Butadiene–Styrene Frameworks

This work demonstrates a means of automatic transformation from planar electronic devices to desirable 3D forms. The method uses a spatially designed thermoplastic framework created via extrusion shear printing of acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene (ABS) on a stress‐free ABS film, which can be laminated to a membrane‐type electronic device layer. Thermal annealing above the glass transition temperature allows stress relaxation in the printed polymer chains, resulting in an overall shape transformation of the framework. In addition, the significant reduction in the Young's modulus and the ability of the polymer chains to reflow in the rubbery state release the stress concentration in the electronic device layer, which can be positioned outside the neutral mechanical plane. Electrical analyses and mechanical simulations of a membrane‐type Au electrode and indium gallium zinc oxide transistor arrays before and after transformation confirm the versatility of this method for developing 3D electronic devices based on planar forms.     

Influence of aflatoxin in Nuruk on the safety of starch-based alcoholic beverage

Nuruk is a fermentation agent used to manufacture alcoholic beverages, which contains a variety of microorganisms. Most microorganisms in Nuruk are useful for the production of alcoholic beverages; however, Nuruk can be infected with Aspergillus flavus, which produces aflatoxin (AF). Therefore, this study analyzed total AF concentrations in Nuruk, the transfer of AF from Nuruk to alcoholic beverages, and AF-producing microorganisms to determine the safety of alcoholic beverages with respect to this toxin. ELISA showed that total AF levels in 14 of 61 Nuruk samples exceeded 15 ppb, the Korean permissible level in cereal products. In alcoholic beverages produced with Nuruk containing AF levels >15 ppb, only AF G₁ was detected, at a level of 0.3 ppb, and the transfer ratio of AF G₁ was approximately 1.2% to 1.3%. The dominant genera in Nuruk were Aspergillus and Rhizopus. Among 30 strains belonging to Aspergillus, 10 produced only AF B₁ at levels of 0.1 to 2.4 ppb after incubation at 25 °C for 8 days on potato dextrose agar plates. Although AF in Nuruk was rarely transferred to alcoholic beverages and the aflatoxigenic strains were found to possess poor AF-producing capacity, further efforts to reduce AF in Nuruk are needed to ensure the safety of alcoholic beverages.