MiR‐140 is a microRNA specially involved in chondrogenesis and osteoarthritis pathogenesis. However, its transcriptional regulation and target genes in cartilage development are not fully understood. Here we detected that miR‐140 was uniquely expressed in chondrocyte and suppressed by Wnt/β‐catenin signalling. The miR‐140 primary transcript was an intron‐retained RNA co‐expressed with Wwp2‐C isoform, which was directly induced by Sox9 through binding to the intron 10 of Wwp2 gene. Knockdown of miR‐140 in limb bud micromass cultures resulted in arrest of chondrogenic proliferation. Sp1, the activator of the cell cycle regulator p15INK4b, was identified as a target of miR‐140 in maintaining the chondrocyte proliferation. Collectively, our findings expand our understanding of the transcriptional regulation and the chondrogenic role of miR‐140 in chondrogenesis.

Protein misfolding to form amyloid aggregates is the main cause of neurodegenerative diseases. While it has been widely acknowledged that amyloid formation in vivo is highly associated with molecular surfaces, particularly biological membranes, how their intrinsic features, for example, chirality, influence this process still remains unclear. Here we use cysteine enantiomer modified graphene oxide (GO) as a model to show that surface chirality strongly influences this process. We report that R-cysteine modification suppresses the adsorption, nucleation, and fiber elongation processes of Aβ(1-40) and thus largely inhibits amyloid fibril formation on the surface, while S-modification promotes these processes. And surface chirality also greatly influences the conformational transition of Aβ(1-40) from α-helix to β-sheet. More interestingly, we find that this effect is highly related to the distance between chiral moieties and GO surface, and inserting a spacer group of about 1-2 nm between them prevents the adsorption of Aβ(1-40) oligomers, which eliminates the chiral effect. Detailed study stresses the crucial roles of GO surface. It brings novel insights for better understanding the amyloidosis process on surface from a biomimetic perspective.

Tyrosine phosphorylation (pTyr), much of which occurred on localized multiple sites, initiates cellular signaling, governs cellular functions, and its dysregulation is implicated in many diseases, especially cancers. pTyr-specific sensing is of great significance for understanding disease states and developing targeted anticancer drugs, however, it is very challenging due to the slight difference from serine (pSer) or threonine phosphorylation (pThr). Here we present polyethylenimine-g-phenylguanidine (PEI-PG)-modified nanochannels that can address the challenge. Rich guanidinium groups enabled PEI-PG to form multiple interactions with phosphorylated residues, especially pTyr residue, which triggered the conformational change of PEI-PG. By taking advantage of the "OFF−ON" change of the ion flux arising from the conformational shrinkage of the grafted PEI-PG, the nanochannels could distinguish phosphorylated peptide (PP) from nonmodified peptide, recognize PPs with pSer, pThr, or pTyr residue and PPs with different numbers of identical residues, and importantly could sense pTyr peptides in a biosample. Benefiting from the strong interaction between the guanidinium group and the pTyr side-chain, the specific sensing of pTyr peptide was achieved by performing a simple logic operation based on PEI-PG-modified nanochannels when Ca 2+ was introduced as an interferent. The excellent pTyr sensing capacity makes the nanochannels available for real-time monitoring of the pTyr process by c-Abl kinase on a peptide substrate, even under complicated conditions, and the proof-of-concept study of monitoring the kinase activity demonstrates its potential in kinase inhibitor screening.