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OBJECTIVES To explore if and how the microbiota changed in PCOS women against healthy women. METHODS Eight obese PCOS (PO group), ten non-obese PCOS (PN group) and nine healthy normal-weight women (control) (C group) were enrolled. Insulin (INS), testosterone (T), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), estrogen (E2) and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) were detected with radioimmunoassay. Anti mullerian hormone (AMH), fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) were determined by chemiluminescence immunoassay, glucose oxidase method and HPLC, respectively. Gut microbiota composition was evaluated by PCR. Alpha diversity was assessed using Chao1 and Shannon index. RESULTS PCOS women showed significantly higher T, LH, LH/FSH and lower FSH levels than control(p less then 0.05). AMH level was significantly higher in PO than PN group(p less then 0.05). PO group presented significantly higher fasting insulin level and HMOA-IR scores than other groups, lower observed SVs and alpha diversity than C group, higher beta diversity than PN group(p less then 0.05), and decreased in abundances of genera (mainly butyrate producers). Regression analysis showed decreased abundances of several genera were correlated with higher circulating testosterone and impaired glucose metabolism. CONCLUSIONS PCOS is associated with changes in the gut microbiota composition. Obesity has a driving role in the development of dysbiotic gut microbiota in PCOS.This study explored inclusion of female participants in Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant-funded human cardiovascular research at Ontario universities between 2010-2018. Ninety-six publications were examined and 4 principal investigators were interviewed. Females were excluded/underrepresented in 63% of publications with 49% male-only and 5% female-only samples. The sex-bias appears to be explained by dependence on research knowledge and methodologies that maintain and reproduce a firmly established discourse of the male norm. Novelty Female participants were underrepresented in NSERC DG-funded cardiovascular research at Ontario universities between 2010-2018.Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology refers to the reprogramming of terminally differentiated somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells by introducing specific transcription factors that are known to regulate pluripotency, including Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc. In this study, we reprogrammed the primary fibroblasts isolated from the Daxxflox/flox mice, which carry the Oct4-green fluorescent protein reporter, and employed wild-type littermates as a control to induce iPSCs, then knocked out Daxx by infecting with Cre virus at the cellular level. The pluripotency and self-renewal capacity of iPSCs were determined. In addition, Daxx deletion altered the pluripotency marker (Nanog, Oct4) expression and displayed neural differentiation defects. Particularly, by performing transcriptome analysis, we observed that numerous ribosome biogenesis-related genes were altered, and quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed that the expression of rDNA-related genes, 47S and 18S, was elevated after Daxx deletion. Finally, we illustrated that the expression of the neurodevelopment-related gene was upregulated both in iPSCs and differentiated neurospheres. Taken together, we demonstrated that Daxx knockout promotes the expression of rDNA, pluripotency, and neurodevelopment genes, which may improve the differentiation abilities of mouse iPSCs (miPSCs).The airway inflammatory response is closely associated with asthma. The purpose of this article was to study the roles of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) in the process of airway inflammatory response in asthma. We established the asthmatic mice model with intraperitoneal injected ovalbumin medium, then with the flow cytometry analysis, we detected the ILCs and their surface proteins in the mice blood samples, besides, we analyzed the amounts of inflammatory cytokines and secreted proteins in the mice bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and blood serum. Moreover, Western blot analyzed the proteins in the mice bronchial epithelial tissues. The ILC2 amounts were obviously increased in young asthmatic mice model. And, the proteins CD25 and CCR10 were highly expressed in the sorted ILC2s. Besides, the cytokines interleukin (IL)-5, IL-13, IL-33, CCL22, and CCL27 were abundant in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of asthmatic mice model. And, the secretion of IL-5, IL-13, IL-33, TSLP, and CCL22 in blood serum was much more in asthmatic mice model than in the normal control mice, whereas the secretion of PGD2 was suppressed in asthmatic mice bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and blood serum. Additionally, the guanine nucleotide-binding proteins Gα12 and Gα13 were upregulated in asthmatic mice bronchial tissues, and the protein SERCA2 was downregulated; moreover, the proteins NFAT, IRF4, and its downstream signal STAT6 were all upregulated in the asthmatic mice bronchial tissues. ILC2s were involved in the response of airway inflammation through secretion of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines to dysregulate the Ca2+ homeostasis in airway in the process of asthma. [Figure see text].Chicken embryonic stem cells (cESCs) isolated from the egg at the stage X hold great promise for cell therapy, tissue engineering, pharmaceutical, and biotechnological applications. They are considered to be pluripotent cells with the capacity to self-renewal and differentiate into specialized cells. However, long-term maintenance of cESCs cannot be realized now, which impedes the establishment of cESC line and limits their applications. Therefore, the separation locations, isolation methods, and culture conditions especially the supplements and action mechanisms of cytokines, including leukemia inhibitory factor, fibroblast growth factor, transforming growth factor beta, bone morphogenic protein, and activin for cESCs in vitro, have been reviewed here. These defined strategies will contribute to identify the key mechanism on the self-renewal of cESCs, facilitate to optimize system that supports the derivation and longtime maintenance of cESCs, establish the cESC line, and develop the biobank of genetic resources in chicken.The aims of this study were to investigate the expression of prolyl 4-hydroxylase subunit alpha-1 (P4HA1) and its relationship with clinicopathological features in lung cancer (LC), breast cancer (BC), and head and neck cancer (HNSC) and to discuss the possibility of P4HA1 being a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker. Data on the RNA expression profile, protein expression profile, and relevant clinical information were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and The Human Protein Atlas databases. The relationship between P4HA1 mRNA expression and clinicopathological features was evaluated. Survival analysis was performed to assess overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS). The multivariate Cox regression model was employed to analyze the independent prognostic factors. Finally, protein-protein interaction networks were constructed and enrichment analysis was performed to identify the latent P4HA1-related terms and pathways. This study showed that P4HA1 was upregulated in three types of tumor tissues (p? less then ?0.05) and high P4HA1 was significantly relevant to the clinical features of patients with LC, BC, or HNSC. Survival analysis indicated that patients with high P4HA1 had unfavorable clinical outcomes. Multivariate analysis showed that the high P4HA1 expression was an independent prognostic factor for poor OS and RFS in LC and HNSC patients. Bioinformatic analysis was performed to predict P4HA1-interacted proteins and further evaluate possible signal pathways. In the current study, the rising P4HA1 was identified in LC, BC, and HNSC and significantly correlated with the clinicopathological features of patients. High P4HA1, suggesting poor clinical outcomes, could be used as an early diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for patients with aforementioned tumors.Global DNA hydroxymethylation mediated by the ten-eleven translocation (TET) enzyme was induced in allergen-induced airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR) in mouse lung tissues and specifically in isolated airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells. TET is an α-ketoglutarate (α-KG)-dependent enzyme, and the production of α-KG is catalyzed by isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH). However, the role of IDHs in the regulation of DNA hydroxymethylation in ASM cells is unknown. In comparison with non-asthmatic cells, asthmatic ASM cells exhibited a higher TET activity and IDH2 (not IDH-1 and -3) gene expression level. We modified the expression of IDH2 in ASM cells from human asthmatics by small interference RNA (siRNA), and the α-KG level, TET activity, global DNA hydroxymethylation, cell proliferation, and expression of ASM phenotypic genes were examined. Inhibition of IDH2 in asthmatic ASM cells decreased the α-KG level, TET activity, and global DNA hydroxymethylation and reversed the aberrant ASM phenotypes (including decreased cell proliferation and ASM phenotypic gene expression). Specifically, asthmatic cells transfected with siRNA against IDH2 (siIDH2) showed decreased 5hmC level at the transforming growth factor beta 2 (TGFB2) promoter determined by oxidative bisulfite sequencing (oxBS-seq). Taken together, our findings revealed that IDH2 plays an important role in the epigenetic regulation of ASM phenotypic changes in asthmatic ASM cells, suggesting that IDH2 is a potential therapeutic target for reversing the abnormal phenotypes seen in asthma.Over the past 66 years our knowledge of the role of endothelium in the regulation of cardiovascular function and dysfunction has advanced from the assumption that it is a single layer of cells that serves as a barrier between the blood stream and vascular smooth muscle, to an understanding of its role as an essential endocrine-like organ. In terms of historical contributions, we pay particular credit to 1. The Canadian scientist, Dr. Rudolf Altschul who, based on pathological changes in the appearance of the endothelium advanced the argument in 1954 that "one is only as old as one's endothelium"; and 2. The American scientist, Dr. Robert Furchgott, a 1998 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, who identified the importance of the endothelium in the regulation of blood flow. This review provides a brief history of how our knowledge of endothelial function has advanced and now recognize that the endothelium produces a plethora of signalling molecules possessing paracrine, autocrine and, arguably, systemic hormone functions. In addition, the endothelium is a therapeutic target for the anti-diabetic drugs, metformin, glucagon-like peptide I (GLP-1) receptor agonists and inhibitors of the sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) that offset the vascular disease associated with diabetes.In mouse development, differentiation of the inner cell mass (ICM) and trophectoderm (TE) during the transition from the morula to blastocyst stage is regulated by the Hippo pathway; however, the functions of the Hippo pathway in porcine embryogenesis have not been investigated. In the present study, we examined the gene expression patterns of the Hippo pathway members yes-associated protein 1 (YAP1) and large tumor suppressor 2 (LATS2) and the functions of these genes during porcine preimplantation development using RNA interference. Both YAP1 and LATS2 mRNA levels were shown high in the in vitro matured oocytes and 1-cell stage embryos and fell progressively with development. YAP1 nuclear localization was detected at the morula and blastocyst stages. Downregulation of either YAP1 or LATS2 inhibited porcine preimplantation development and affected the expression levels of POU class 5 homeobox 1 (OCT-4) and SRY-related HMG-box gene 2 (SOX2), transcription factors necessary for the ICM/TE differentiation. Taken together, YAP1 and LATS2 are essential for porcine preimplantation development, and it is possible that the Hippo pathway has important roles in porcine ICM/TE segregation.