Micropeptide MPM regulates cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart growth via the AKT pathway.

The role of micropeptide in cardiomyocyte proliferation remains unknown. We found that MPM (micropeptide in mitochondria) was highly expressed in cardiomyocytes. Compared to MPM mice, MPM knockout (MPM) mice exhibited reduction in left ventricular (LV) mass, myocardial thickness and LV fractional shortening.

An updated review of the new hadron states.

The past decades witnessed the golden era of hadron physics. Many excited open heavy flavor mesons and baryons have been observed since 2017. We shall provide an updated review of the recent experimental and theoretical progresses in this active field.

Downregulation of a mitochondrial micropeptide, MPM, promotes hepatoma metastasis by enhancing mitochondrial complex I activity.

We and others have shown that MPM (micropeptide in mitochondria) regulates myogenic differentiation and muscle development. However, the roles of MPM in cancer development remain unknown. Here we revealed that MPM was downregulated significantly in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues and its decrease was associated with increased metastasis potential and HCC recurrence.

Strong decays of fully-charm tetraquarks into di-charmonia.

We study strong decays of the possible fully-charm tetraquarks recently observed by LHCb, and calculate their relative branching ratios through the Fierz rearrangement. Together with our previous QCD sum rule study, our results suggest that the broad structure around 6.2-6.

A novel mitochondrial micropeptide MPM enhances mitochondrial respiratory activity and promotes myogenic differentiation.

Micropeptides belong to a class of newly identified small molecules with <100 amino acids in length, and their functions remain largely unknown. Here, we identified a novel muscle-enriched micropeptide that was localized to mitochondria (named MPM, micropeptide in mitochondria) and upregulated during in vitro differentiation of C2C12 myoblasts and in vivo early postnatal skeletal muscle development, and muscle regeneration after cardiotoxin (CTX) damage. Downregulation of MPM was observed in the muscular tissues of tibial muscular dystrophy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients.

A review of the open charm and open bottom systems.

Since the discovery of the first charmed meson in 1976, many open-charm and open-bottom hadrons were observed. In 2003 two narrow charm-strange states [Formula: see text] and D (2460) were discovered by the BaBar and CLEO Collaborations, respectively. After that, more excited heavy hadrons were reported.

Decoding the X(5568) as a Fully Open-Flavor sub[over ¯]d[over ¯] Tetraquark State.

We investigate the recent evidence for a charged X(5568) meson as an exotic open-flavor tetraquark state sub[over ¯]d[over ¯] with J^{P}=0^{+}/1^{+} in the framework of QCD sum rules. We use the color antisymmetric [3[over ¯]_{c}]_{su}⊗[3_{c}]_{b[over ¯]d[over ¯]} tetraquark currents in both scalar and axial-vector channels to perform evaluations and numerical analyses. Our results imply that the X(5568) can be interpreted as both the scalar sub[over ¯]d[over ¯] tetraquark state and the axial-vector one, which are in good agreement with the experimental measurement.

Towards Exotic Hidden-Charm Pentaquarks in QCD.

Inspired by P(c)(4380) and P(c)(4450) recently observed by LHCb, a QCD sum rule investigation is performed, by which they can be identified as exotic hidden-charm pentaquarks composed of an anticharmed meson and a charmed baryon. Our results suggest that P(c)(4380) and P(c)(4450) have quantum numbers J(P)=3/2(-) and 5/2(+), respectively. Furthermore, two extra hidden-charm pentaqurks with configurations D̅Σ(c)(*) and D̅(*)Σ(c)(*) are predicted, which have spin-parity quantum numbers J(P)=3/2(-) and J(P)=5/2(+), respectively.

Oil-water separation property of polymer-contained wastewater from polymer-flooding oilfields in Bohai Bay, China.

In this study, the effects of gravitational settling time, temperature, speed and time of centrifugation, flocculant type and dosage, bubble size and gas amount were investigated. The results show that the simple increase in settling time and temperature is of no use for oil-water separation of the three wastewater samples. As far as oil-water separation efficiency is concerned, increasing centrifugal speed and centrifugal time is highly effective for L sample, and has a certain effect on J sample, but is not valid for S sample.