Theoretical predication of temperature effects on accommodative processes in simulated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis during hypothermia and hyperthermia

lncRNA NORAD Contributes to Colorectal Cancer Progression by Inhibition of miR-202-5p

Previous study indicates that long noncoding RNA NORAD could serve as a competing endogenous RNA to pancreatic cancer metastasis. However, its role in colorectal cancer (CRC) needs to be investigated. In the present study, we found that the expression of NORAD was significantly upregulated in CRC tissues. Furthermore, the expression of NORAD was positively related with CRC metastasis and patients’ poor prognosis. Knockdown of NORAD markedly inhibited CRC cell proliferation, migration, and invasion but induced cell apoptosis in vitro. In vivo experiments also indicated an inhibitory effect of NORAD on tumor growth. Mechanistically, we found that NORAD served as a competing endogenous RNA for miR-202-5p. We found that there was an inverse relationship between the expression of NORAD and miR-202-5p in CRC tissues. Moreover, overexpression of miR-202-5p in SW480 and HCT116 cells significantly inhibited cellular proliferation, migration, and invasion. Taken together, our study demonstrated that the NORAD/miR-202-5p axis plays a pivotal function on CRC progression.

Long Noncoding RNA CCAL Promotes Papillary Thyroid Cancer Progression by Activation of NOTCH1 Pathway

Long noncoding RNA CCAL has been reported to promote tumor progression in various human cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma, osteosarcoma, and colorectal cancer. However, the role of CCAL in papillary thyroid cancer remains largely unknown. In the present study, we found that the expression of CCAL was upregulated in papillary thyroid tumor tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues. Moreover, the expression of CCAL was positively related with papillary thyroid cancer severity and TNM stage and predicated poor prognosis. Besides, we found that knockdown of CCAL significantly inhibited papillary thyroid cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro and reduced tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. We found that knockdown of CCAL dramatically decreased the expression of NOTCH1 and suppressed the activation of the NOTCH1 signaling pathway. Furthermore, overexpression of NOTCH1 rescued the proliferation, migration, and invasion in papillary thyroid cancer cells. Taken together, our data indicated that CCAL promoted papillary thyroid cancer development and progression by activation of the NOTCH1 pathway, which provided a new insight on the design of therapeutic targets.

Temperature effects on accommodative processes in simulated amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the physiological range

The present study investigates the temperature dependence of electrotonic potentials in mathematically-simulated myelinated axons with one of three increasingly-severe type of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) pathology, termed as ALS1, ALS2 and ALS3, respectively, in the physiological range (30-37∘C). These potentials were elicited by long-lasting (100 ms) subthreshold polarizing current stimuli (±40% of the threshold). Numerical solutions were computed using our temperature-dependent multi-layered model. The results showed the following trends: (i) in ALS1, polarizing electrotonic potentials were normal; (ii) in ALS2 and ALS3, action potentials were elicited in the early parts of the depolarizing electrotonic potentials, and (iii) in ALS3, spontaneous discharges were elicited after the termination of applied hyperpolarizing stimuli (i.e., post-anodal excitation). The ionic currents underlying electrotonic potentials in the ALS1 case were attributable to the activation of potassium fast (Kf+) and slow (Ks+) channels in the nodal and internodal axolemma beneath the myelin sheath. By contrast, in ALS2 and ALS3, the depolarizing stimuli activated the classical "transient" Na+ channels in the nodal and internodal axolemma beneath the myelin sheath eliciting action potential generation. These results obtained were closer to those observed in hypothermia (⩽25∘C) than in hyperthermia (⩾40∘C).