Publications by authors named "Boan Li"

Obesity is a significant global health concern linked to chronic diseases, with the thermogenic capacity of brown adipose tissue (BAT) being crucial for obesity treatment. This study investigates the potential of camel-milk-derived extracellular vesicles (mEVs) in mitigating high-fat-diet-induced obesity and metabolic dysfunction in mice. Our results show that oral administration of mEVs significantly reduces body fat percentage and lipid accumulation while lowering serum triglycerides, free fatty acids, and cholesterol levels.

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Background: The CRISPR/Cas12a system has emerged as a versatile molecular diagnostic tool due to its dual cis- and trans-cleavage activities. However, two key limitations hinder its broad application: high tolerance to single-base mismatches in DNA targets and strict reliance on DNA activators. To address these challenges, we hypothesized that structural reengineering of crRNA could enhance specificity and functional versatility.

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Colorectal cancer (CRC) liver metastasis is the main cause of cancer-related mortality. How liver influences intercellular communication to support CRC liver metastasis remains unknown. Herein, we link GP73, whose chronic upregulation in hepatocytes triggers non-obese metabolic-dysfunction associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in mice, with exosome biogenesis and CRC liver metastasis.

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Ricin toxin (RT), a highly potent plant-derived toxin, represents a critical threat due to its capacity to induce fatal acute lung injury (ALI) upon inhalation. While the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a receptor tyrosine kinase predominantly expressed on epithelial cells and fibroblasts, regulates cellular processes such as growth, proliferation, differentiation and inflammation, its involvement in RT-induced ALI remains unexplored. This study investigates this relationship using a mouse model of ALI induced by aerosolized RT at a dose of 2.

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Background: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is difficult to detect early and highly aggressive, often leading to poor patient prognosis. Existing serum biomarkers like CA19-9 are limited in early diagnosis, failing to meet clinical needs. Machine learning (ML)/deep learning (DL) technologies have shown great potential in biomedicine.

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Platelets possess cancer-induced reprogramming properties, thereby contributing to RNA profile alterations and further cancer progression, while the former is considered a promising biosource for cancer detection. Hence, tumor-educated platelets (TEP) are considered a prospective novel method for early breast cancer (BC) screening. Our study integrated the data from 276 patients with untreated BC, 95 with benign disease controls, 214 healthy controls, and 2 who underwent mastectomy in Chinese and European cohorts to develop a 10-biomarker diagnostic model.

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Article Synopsis
  • Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is essential for producing heat in the body without shivering, making it a potential target for obesity and metabolic disease treatments.
  • The study identifies SOX4 as a crucial factor for the development and function of BAT; its absence leads to loss of fatty tissue's heat-generating properties and increased vulnerability to obesity.
  • SOX4 promotes the activity of EBF2, a gene important for brown fat formation, and its phosphorylation by PKA aids in its function, highlighting SOX4's key role in regulating thermogenesis in brown fat cells.
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Unlabelled: To explore the influence of storage temperature and time on the stability of different concentrations of hepatitis C virus nucleic acid (HCV RNA) samples and to provide data reference for laboratory quality control. Serum samples of 10 patients with HCV RNA detection quantitation of 10-10 IU/mL were collected. The samples of each patient were diluted into three concentrations: high, medium, and low.

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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prevalent and aggressive cancer that presents significant challenges for early detection. This study introduces the GlyExo-Capture method for isolating fucosylated extracellular vesicles (Fu-EVs) from serum. We analyze microRNA (miRNA) profiles from Fu-EVs in 88 HCC patients and 179 non-HCC controls using next-generation sequencing (NGS) and identify five miRNAs (hsa-let-7a, hsa-miR-21, hsa-miR-125a, hsa-miR-200a, and hsa-miR-150) as biomarkers for HCC diagnosis.

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Purpose: To investigate the genetic diversity of IncG plasmids, we have proposed a typing scheme based on replicon and performed comparative genomic analysis of five IncG plasmids from China.

Methods: p30860-KPC, p116965-KPC, pA1705-KPC, pA1706-KPC and pNY5520-KPC total in five IncG plasmids from clinical isolates of and , respectively, were fully sequenced and were compared with the previously collected reference plasmid p10265-KPC.

Results: Based on phylogeny, IncG-type plasmids are divided into IncG-I to IncG-VIII, the five plasmids belong to IncG-VIII.

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Background: The wide spread of carbapenem-resistance clones of Acinetobacter baumannii has made it a global public problem. Some studies have shown that the prevalence of Acinetobacter baumannii clones can change over time. However, few studies with respect to the change of epidemiological clones in Acinetobacter baumannii during Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) were reported.

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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignancy that occurs worldwide and is generally associated with poor prognosis. The development of resistance to targeted therapies such as sorafenib is a major challenge in clinical cancer treatment. In the present study, Ten-eleven translocation protein 1 (TET1) was found to be highly expressed in sorafenib-resistant HCC cells and knockdown of TET1 can substantially improve the therapeutic effect of sorafenib on HCC, indicating the potential important roles of TET1 in sorafenib resistance in HCC.

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Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer, has a poor prognosis and lacks effective treatment strategies. Here, the study discovered that TNBC shows a decreased expression of epithelial transcription factor ovo-like 2 (OVOL2). The loss of OVOL2 promotes fatty acid oxidation (FAO), providing additional energy and NADPH to sustain stemness characteristics, including sphere-forming capacity and tumor initiation.

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Rapid, sensitive and specific methods are crucial for nucleic acid detection. CRISPR/Cas12b has recently been widely used in nucleic acid detection. However, due to its thermophagic property, DNA isothermal recombinase-aided amplification (RAA) and subsequent CRISPR/Cas12b detection require two separate reactions, which is cumbersome and inconvenient and may cause aerosol pollution.

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Resistance to immunotherapy in colorectal cancer (CRC) is associated with obstruction of FAS (Apo-1 or CD95)-dependent apoptosis, a hallmark of cancer. Here it is demonstrated that the upregulation of pirin (PIR) protein in colon cancers promotes tumorigenesis. Knockout or inhibition of PIR dramatically increases FAS expression, FAS-dependent apoptosis and attenuates colorectal tumor formation in mice.

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Ten-eleven translocation proteins (TETs) are dioxygenases that convert 5-methylcytosine (5mC) to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), an important epigenetic mark that regulates gene expression during development and differentiation. Here, we found that the TET2 expression was positively associated with adipogenesis. Further, and experiments showed that TET2 deficiency blocked adipogenesis by inhibiting the expression of the key transcription factors CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta (C/EBPβ), C/EBPα and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ).

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Drug-metabolizing enzymes play an important role in the metabolism of drugs in vivo. Their activity is an important factor affecting the rate of drug metabolism, which directly determines the intensity and persistence of drug action. Patients taking medication can be divided into different metabolic types through detection of CYP2C19 drug-metabolizing enzyme gene polymorphisms, which can then be used for medication guidance for clopidogrel.

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has been listed as one of the most critical pathogens in nosocomial infections; however, the key genes and mechanisms to adapt to the host microenvironment lack in-depth understanding. In this study, a total of 76 isolates (from 8 to 12 isolates per patient, spanning 128 to 188 days) were longitudinally collected from eight patients to investigate the within-host evolution of . A total of 70 within-host mutations were identified, 80% of which were nonsynonymous, indicating the important role of positive selection.

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Preadipocyte determination expanding the pool of preadipocytes is a vital process in adipocyte hyperplasia, but the molecular mechanisms underlying this process are yet to be elucidated. Herein, SRY-related HMG box transcription factor 4 (SOX4) was identified as a critical target in response to BMP4- and TGFβ-regulated preadipocyte determination. SOX4 deficiency is sufficient to promote preadipocyte determination in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and acquisition of preadipocyte properties in nonadipogenic lineages, while its overexpression impairs the adipogenic capacity of preadipocytes and converts them into nonadipogenic lineages.

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CRISPR-Cas12a (Cpf1) is widely used for pathogen detection. However, most Cas12a nucleic acid detection methods are limited by a PAM sequence requirement. Moreover, preamplification and Cas12a cleavage are separate.

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The pregnane X receptor (PXR) is an important regulator of hepatocellular carcinoma cellular resistance to antitumor drugs. Activation of PXR was modulated by the co-regulators. The target protein for the Xenopus plus end-directed kinesin-like protein (Xklp2) known as TPX2 that was previously considered as a tubulin regulator, also functions as the regulator of some transcription factors and pro-oncogenes in human malignances.

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Introduction: Hypermucoviscous (HmKp) poses an emerging and highly pathogenic global health threat. This study aimed to investigate the clinical and genomic characteristics of HmKp isolates to better understand the virulence mechanisms of the hypermucoviscous (HMV) phenotype.

Methods: From May 2018 to August 2021, 203 non-repeat isolates causing invasive infections were collected from a hospital in Beijing, China.

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Brown and beige fat protect against cold environments and obesity by catabolizing stored energy to generate heat. This process is achieved by controlling thermogenesis-related gene expression and the development of brown/beige fat through the induction of transcription factors, most notably PPARγ. However, the cofactors that induce the expression of thermogenic genes with PPARγ are still not well understood.

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Mammalian sensory hair cells (HCs) have limited capacity for regeneration, which leads to permanent hearing loss after HC death. Here, we used in vitro RNA-sequencing to show that the Hippo signaling pathway is involved in HC damage and self-repair processes. Turning off Hippo signaling through Mst1/2 inhibition or Yap overexpression induces YAP nuclear accumulation, especially in supporting cells, which induces supernumerary HC production and HC regeneration after injury.

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