Publications by authors named "Luoying Zhang"

Article Synopsis
  • Aging is linked to changes in circadian rhythms and stem cell depletion, but the influence of circadian systems on skeletal aging is not fully understood.
  • In male mice, reduced levels of the circadian protein BMAL1 in bone marrow endothelial cells were found to disrupt the balance of extracellular matrix proteins, leading to increased breakdown of fibrillin-1 (FBN1) which affects bone health.
  • The loss of BMAL1 activates TGF-β signaling, promoting further breakdown of FBN1 and resulting in stem cell exhaustion and increased osteoclast activity, highlighting the role of endothelial cells in maintaining skeletal integrity during aging.
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  • - Our brain adjusts to seasonal changes, but misadapting can lead to seasonal psychiatric disorders, particularly winter depression linked to specific gene variants in the circadian clock gene PERIOD3 (PER3).
  • - Two specific variants, P415A and H417R, were found to cause winter depression-like behaviors in male mice, linked to how these variants affect the adrenal gland's function.
  • - These variants disrupt the normal downregulation of corticosterone levels during shorter days, leading to increased glucocorticoid signaling, which then reduces serotonin production and contributes to depressive behaviors.
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  • * Melatonin (MLT), known for its role in sleep regulation, has shown potential analgesic effects in NP, particularly through its action on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and MLT receptor 2 (MTR).
  • * The study found that MLT influences pain management by modulating neuronal excitability and microglial activation in the ACC, suggesting a new therapeutic approach for treating chronic NP.
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  • Physical training boosts bone mass, but the ideal time for exercise to maximize bone growth is still unclear.
  • Exercising during the early active phase significantly enhances bone length in mice and affects gene expression related to bone development and metabolism.
  • The study emphasizes the importance of timing in exercise for bone health and proposes a signaling network to better understand how exercise influences bone growth, providing insights for potential human interventions.
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Sleep, locomotor and social activities are essential animal behaviors, but their reciprocal relationships and underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we elicit information from a cutting-edge large-language model (LLM), generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) 3.5, which interprets 10.

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Sleep disruptions are quite common in psychological disorders, but the underlying mechanism remains obscure. Wolfram syndrome 1 (WS1) is an autosomal recessive disease mainly characterized by diabetes insipidus/mellitus, neurodegeneration and psychological disorders. It is caused by loss-of function mutations of the WOLFRAM SYNDROME 1 (WFS1) gene, which encodes an endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-resident transmembrane protein.

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Circadian clock drives the 24-h rhythm in our behavior and physiology. The molecular clock consists of a series of transcriptional/translational feedback loops operated by a number of clock genes. A very recent study reported that the clock protein PERIOD (PER) is organized into discrete foci at the nuclear envelope in fly circadian neurons, which is believed to be important for controlling the subcellular localization of clock genes.

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Severe sleep deprivation (SD) has been highly associated with systemic energy wasting, such as lipid loss and glycogen depletion. Despite immune dysregulation and neurotoxicity observed in SD animals, whether and how the gut-secreted hormones participate in SD-induced disruption of energy homeostasis remains largely unknown. Using Drosophila as a conserved model organism, we characterize that production of intestinal Allatostatin A (AstA), a major gut-peptide hormone, is robustly increased in adult flies bearing severe SD.

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Proteostasis is fundamental for maintaining organismal health. However, the mechanisms underlying its dynamic regulation and how its disruptions lead to diseases are largely unclear. Here, we conduct in-depth propionylomic profiling in Drosophila, and develop a small-sample learning framework to prioritize the propionylation at lysine 17 of H2B (H2BK17pr) to be functionally important.

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Focal epilepsy accounts for 60% of all forms of epilepsy, but the pathogenic mechanism is not well understood. In this study, three novel mutations in NPRL3 (nitrogen permease regulator-like 3), c.937_945del, c.

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Exposure to artificial light at night (LAN) can induce obesity, depressive disorder and osteoporosis, but the pernicious effects of excessive LAN exposure on tissue structure are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrated that artificial LAN can impair developmental growth plate cartilage extracellular matrix (ECM) formation and cause endoplasmic reticulum (ER) dilation, which in turn compromises bone formation. Excessive LAN exposure induces downregulation of the core circadian clock protein BMAL1, which leads to collagen accumulation in the ER.

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High temperatures severely affect plant growth and pose a threat to global crop production. Heat causes the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum(ER), as well as triggering the heat-shock response (HSR) in the cytosol and the unfolded protein response (UPR) in the ER. Excessive misfolded proteins undergo further degradation through ER-associated degradation (ERAD).

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High-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity is a growing epidemic and major health concern. While excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is a common symptom of HFD-induced obesity, preliminary findings suggest that reduced wakefulness could be improved with time-restricted feeding (TRF). At present, however, the underlying neural mechanisms remain largely unknown.

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Bone regeneration remains a great clinical challenge. Low intensity near-infrared (NIR) light showed strong potential to promote tissue regeneration, offering a promising strategy for bone defect regeneration. However, the effect and underlying mechanism of NIR on bone regeneration remain unclear.

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The abnormal neointima formation caused by the phenotypic switching of vascular smooth cells (VSMCs) into a synthetic state plays a key role in the pathogenesis of various vascular diseases, including atherosclerosis and postangioplasty restenosis. Theaflavin-3,3'-digallate (TF3) in black tea has been reported to exert antiinflammatory and anticancer effects, but its role in neointima formation remains unclear. Here, we delineated a remarkable effect of TF3 in suppressing neointima formation of VSMCs as well as the ability of primary rat aortic smooth cells (RASMCs) to proliferate and migrate .

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The β-adrenergic receptor (βAR) is a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) that mediates the majority of cellular responses to external stimuli. Aberrant expression of βAR results in various pathophysiological disorders, including tumorigenesis, but little is known about its role in liver regeneration. This study aims to investigate the impact and the underlying mechanism of βAR in liver regeneration.

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Background: Haploinsufficiency is widely accepted as the pathogenic mechanism of spastic paraplegia type 4 (SPG4). However, there are some cases that cannot be explained by reduced function of the spastin protein encoded by SPAST.

Objectives: To identify the causative gene of autosomal dominant hereditary spastic paraplegia in three large Chinese families and explore the pathological mechanism of a spastin variant.

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Human NaV1.9 (hNaV1.9), encoded by SCN11A, is preferentially expressed in nociceptors, and its mutations have been linked to pain disorders.

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Article Synopsis
  • In 2008, guidelines were established for researching autophagy, which has since gained significant interest and new technologies, necessitating regular updates to monitoring methods across various organisms.
  • The new guidelines emphasize selecting appropriate techniques to evaluate autophagy while noting that no single method suits all situations; thus, a combination of methods is encouraged.
  • The document highlights that key proteins involved in autophagy also impact other cellular processes, suggesting genetic studies should focus on multiple autophagy-related genes to fully understand these pathways.
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Congenital nystagmus (CN) is an ocular movement disorder manifested as involuntary conjugated binocular oscillation and usually occurs in early infancy. The pathological mechanism underlying CN is still poorly understood. We mapped a novel genetic locus 9q33.

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Shift work is known to be associated with an increased risk of neurological and psychiatric diseases, but how it contributes to the development of these diseases remains unclear. Chronic jet lag (CJL) induced by shifting light-dark cycles repeatedly is a commonly used protocol to mimic the environmental light/dark changes encountered by shift workers. Here we subjected wildtype mice to CJL and performed positron emission tomography imaging of glucose metabolism to monitor brain activities.

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Pilomatricoma, a benign skin appendage tumor, also known as calcifying epithelioma, consists of islands of epithelial cells histologically that contain anucleated cells in the center surrounded by basophilic cells and partial calcification. Sporadic pilomatricomas commonly have somatic mutations in the gene CTNNB1, but causative genes from germline and the underlying pathophysiology are unclear. In this study, we identified a germline missense variant of PLCD1 encoding PLCδ1, c.

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