Asthma is a common chronic airway disease worldwide. Due to its clinical and genetic heterogeneity, the cellular and molecular processes in asthma are highly complex and relatively unknown. To discover novel biomarkers and the molecular mechanisms underlying asthma, several studies have been conducted by focusing on gene expression patterns in epithelium through microarray analysis. However, few robust specific biomarkers were identified and some inconsistent results were observed. Therefore, it is imperative to conduct a robust analysis to solve these problems. Herein, an integrated gene expression analysis of ten independent, publicly available microarray data of bronchial epithelial cells from 348 asthmatic patients and 208 healthy controls was performed. As a result, 78 up- and 75 down-regulated genes were identified in bronchial epithelium of asthmatics. Comprehensive functional enrichment and pathway analysis revealed that response to chemical stimulus, extracellular region, pathways in cancer, and arachidonic acid metabolism were the four most significantly enriched terms. In the protein-protein interaction network, three main communities associated with cytoskeleton, response to lipid, and regulation of response to stimulus were established, and the most highly ranked 6 hub genes (up-regulated CD44, KRT6A, CEACAM5, SERPINB2, and down-regulated LTF and MUC5B) were identified and should be considered as new biomarkers. Pathway cross-talk analysis highlights that signaling pathways mediated by IL-4/13 and transcription factor HIF-1α and FOXA1 play crucial roles in the pathogenesis of asthma. Interestingly, three chemicals, polyphenol catechin, antibiotic lomefloxacin, and natural alkaloid boldine, were predicted and may be potential drugs for asthma treatment. Taken together, our findings shed new light on the common molecular pathogenesis mechanisms of asthma and provide theoretical support for further clinical therapeutic studies.

For accurate gene expression quantification, normalization of gene expression data against reliable reference genes is required. It is known that the expression levels of commonly used reference genes vary considerably under different experimental conditions, and therefore, their use for data normalization is limited. In this study, an unbiased identification of reference genes in Caenorhabditis elegans was performed based on 145 microarray datasets (2296 gene array samples) covering different developmental stages, different tissues, drug treatments, lifestyle, and various stresses. As a result, thirteen housekeeping genes (rps-23, rps-26, rps-27, rps-16, rps-2, rps-4, rps-17, rpl-24.1, rpl-27, rpl-33, rpl-36, rpl-35, and rpl-15) with enhanced stability were comprehensively identified by using six popular normalization algorithms and RankAggreg method. Functional enrichment analysis revealed that these genes were significantly overrepresented in GO terms or KEGG pathways related to ribosomes. Validation analysis using recently published datasets revealed that the expressions of newly identified candidate reference genes were more stable than the commonly used reference genes. Based on the results, we recommended using rpl-33 and rps-26 as the optimal reference genes for microarray and rps-2 and rps-4 for RNA-sequencing data validation. More importantly, the most stable rps-23 should be a promising reference gene for both data types. This study, for the first time, successfully displays a large-scale microarray data driven genome-wide identification of stable reference genes for normalizing gene expression data and provides a potential guideline on the selection of universal internal reference genes in C. elegans, for quantitative gene expression analysis.

To achieve high-sensitivity two-photon absorption (2PA) optical limiters and stabilizers, two-photon active materials need to have large 2PA cross-sections. Phase-pure wurtzite (WZ) CdSe/CdS core/shell quantum dots (QDs) with a shell thickness of 11 CdS monolayers were prepared by a high-temperature pyrolysis method, which possess a large volume and nearly defect-free core/shell interfaces. The 2PA cross-section of QDs is measured to be as large as 1.5 × 105 GM by the nonlinear transmittance method. Due to the large 2PA cross-section of phase-pure thick-shell WZ CdSe/CdS core/shell QDs, we successfully explored their application in the field of optical limiting and stabilization. Finally, we successfully fabricated a high-sensitivity optical stabilizer made of a polymer (polymethylmethacrylate) matrix comprising phase-pure thick-shell WZ CdSe/CdS core/shell QDs, which can reduce the amplitude fluctuation by ∼67%. In addition, the device reduces the input energy by ∼40%, indicating that the device can also be applied as an optical limiter. This work promotes the application of optical limiters and stabilizers based on QDs in practical work to a certain extent.

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This paper combines the author's experience in the nursing practice of patients with COVID-19 at the Xiaogan Central Hospital in Hubei Province, and analyses the response strategies for epidemic infectious diseases. It is hoped that this paper will provide some guidance and help in the response to epidemic infectious diseases.