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The present study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of salivary total and oligomeric α-synuclein levels in PD. Furthermore, we sought to explore the relationship between salivary total α-synuclein and α-synuclein SNP variants levels. 201 PD patients and 67 controls were recruited, of which there also had the genetic information of two positive α-synuclein (SNCA) loci. Salivary total α-synuclein was assayed using a highly sensitive Luminex assay and oligomeric α-synuclein was quantified by the combination of Gel filtration chromatography and Western blot, respectively. From our analysis,No difference in salivary total α-synuclein levels was found between PD patients and healthy controls, it decreased with age in PD patients, and was closely associated with genotypic distribution of rs11931074 and rs894278 in PD, respectively. After controlled for age and genders, G allele of rs11931074 was correlated with lower salivary total α-synuclein levels, while G allele of rs894278 was also correlated with the higher levels. Simultaneously, the further study was shown that salivary oligomeric α-synuclein in PD patients significantly increased comparing to healthy controls. In conclusions,our study firstly demonstrated that salivary total α-synuclein levels could be manipulated by different α-synuclein SNPs and salivary oligomeric α-synuclein could be a potential diagnostic indicator of PD.

Endometrial cancer (EC) is one of the most common female malignancies. The patients with high-risk factors may have poor prognosis. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find a new molecule to more accurately predict survival of patients. Leucine-rich-alpha-2-glycoprotein1 (LRG1), one of leucine-rich repeat family, was closely associated with cancer metastasis and poor prognosis. The biological functions and the expression level of LRG1 remain obscure in EC. In this study, by immunohistochemical analysis of 242 EC patient tissues, we found that LRG1 expression was associated with stage and lymphatic metastasis in both test cohort (133 patients) and validation cohort (109 patients). Furthermore, to investigate the prognostic value of LRG1 in endometrial carcinoma, we analyzed the correlation between variables and overall survival with Cox proportional hazard regression. The result showed that LRG1 was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival of endometrial carcinoma patients. To further evaluate the prognostic efficiency of LRG1 in endometrial carcinoma, we compared the sensitivity and specificity of LRG1 in endometrial carcinoma prognosis by logistic regression. The result showed that LRG1 combining with other clinicopathological risk factors was a stronger prognostic model than clinicopathological risk factors alone or their combination. Thus, LRG1 potentially offered clinical value in directing personal treatment for endometrial carcinoma patients.

In this paper, we report a novel cartridge-case-like micromotor. The micromotor, which is fabricated by the template synthesis method, consists of a gelatin shell with platinum nanoparticles decorating its inner surface. Intriguingly, the resulting cartridge-case-like structure exhibits a pH-dependent "open and close" feature, which originates from the pH responsiveness of the gelatin material. On the basis of the catalytic activity of the platinum nanoparticle inside the gelatin shell, the resulting cartridge-case-like structure is capable of moving autonomously in the aqueous solution containing the hydrogen peroxide fuel. More interestingly, we find out that the micromotor can be utilized as a motion-based pH sensor over the whole pH range. The moving velocity of the micromotor increases monotonically with the increase of pH of the analyte solution. Three different factors are considered to be responsible for the proportional relation between the motion speed and pH of the analyte solution: the peroxidase-like and oxidase-like catalytic behavior of the platinum nanoparticle at low and high pH, the volumetric decomposition of the hydrogen peroxide under the basic condition and the pH-dependent catalytic activity of the platinum nanoparticle caused by the swelling/deswelling behavior of the gelatin material. The current work highlights the impact of the material properties on the motion behavior of a micromotor, thus paving the way toward its application in the motion-based sensing field.

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