Publications by authors named "Weidong Zhang"

Systematically identifying the chemical constituents in complex matrices is a challenge due to the inherent characteristics of compounds. The combination of liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and classical molecular networking (CLMN) is a powerful technology for annotating small molecules. However, the low coverage from inappropriate acquisition modes and the inseparability of isomeric compound nodes still hinders the comprehensive metabolite characterization.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Premature ovarian failure (POF) is a common issue in women, and oxidative damage is a key factor in its occurrence, highlighting the need for effective treatments.
  • - The study explores the extraction of collagen peptides from sturgeon swim bladder using various methods, finding that these peptides have strong antioxidant properties and can positively impact ovarian health in POF mice.
  • - The collagen peptides help improve ovarian function by enhancing follicle development and manipulating hormone levels, linked to specific signaling pathways, suggesting potential for future health product development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In recent years, the fully oxygen-tolerant reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization has been emerging as a versatile and powerful tool for preparing well-defined polymers. In this contribution, the symmetrical diethyl xanthogen disulfide (XD) is successfully used as an initiator, chain transfer agent, and termination (iniferter) agent to directly regulate the open-to-air RAFT polymerization. The high end-group fidelity of polymer demonstrated by nuclear magnetic resonance (H-NMR) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectra indicates that sulfur-centered xanthate radical can initiate and regulate RAFT polymerization of methacrylate (MA) under open conditions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Plant compactness (PC) is a crucial agronomic trait that affects plant density in wheat, which in turn influences biomass and grain yield potential. The canopy of high-yielding wheat varieties should exhibit appropriate aboveground plant architecture. In this study, three recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations were generated to identify and validate quantitative trait loci (QTL) related to plant compactness.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: While the association between obesity and kidney diseases has been found in previous studies, the relationship between preschool-age obesity and later-life kidney health remains unclear, posing challenges for effective interventions in this critical life period.

Methods: Utilizing the hitherto largest genome-wide association studies, we conducted two-sample mendelian randomization (MR) to estimate the association of preschool age-specific obesity on kidney health and diseases, including blood urea nitrogen (BUN), eGFRcrea, eGFRcys, chronic kidney disease (CKD), IgA nephropathy, and diabetic nephropathy. Then, we applied multivariable Mendelian randomization (MVMR) and stepwise MR to elucidate the role of adult obesity and 12 other potential factors in the pathway between preschool age-specific obesity and kidney health.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on identifying risk factors for lymph node metastasis (LNM) in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) to aid in surgical decision-making.
  • Clinical data from 2,428 PTC patients who underwent surgery were analyzed using logistic regression techniques to investigate various risk factors.
  • Key independent risk factors for central lymph node metastasis (CLNM) included male gender, age under 45, maximal axial diameter (MAD) over 1 cm, and multifocality, with similar factors also correlating to lateral lymph node metastasis (LLNM).
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) is a T cell inhibitory immune checkpoint molecule that interacts with programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) to promote immune escape of tumor cells. Compared with antibody therapies, small molecule drugs show better prospects due to their advantages such as higher bioavailability, better tissue penetration, and reduced risk of immunogenicity. Here, we found that the small molecule demethylzeylasteral (Dem) can significantly downregulate the expression of PD-L1 in colorectal cancer cells and enhance the killing effect of T cells on tumor cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are drugs that inhibit immune checkpoint (ICP) molecules to restore the antitumor activity of immune cells and eliminate tumor cells. Due to the limitations and certain side effects of current ICIs, such as programmed death protein-1, programmed cell death-ligand 1, and cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA4) antibodies, there is an urgent need to find new drugs with ICP inhibitory effects. In this study, a network-based computational framework called multi-network algorithm-driven drug repositioning targeting ICP (Mnet-DRI) is developed to accurately repurpose novel ICIs from ≈3000 Food and Drug Administration-approved or investigational drugs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Gui-Ling-Ji (GLJ) described in the ancient medical book 'Yunji Qijian' is a traditional Chinese medicine formula used to improve male fertility. It is now available for the treatment of oligoasthenoteratozoospermia (OAT). However, the active ingredients and mechanism of GLJ are not clear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The text discusses the challenge of the exploration-exploitation dilemma in off-policy reinforcement learning (RL), which negatively affects policy performance and sample efficiency.
  • - To address this, a new RL algorithm called Historical Decision-making Regularized Maximum Entropy (HDMRME) is introduced, aimed at better balancing exploration and exploitation while enhancing policy performance.
  • - The effectiveness of HDMRME is theoretically supported and experimentally validated through various tasks, showing it outperforms other leading RL algorithms in terms of sample efficiency and overall competitiveness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The molecular engineering of boron dipyrromethenes (BODIPYs) has garnered widespread attention due to their structural diversity enabling tailored physicochemical properties for optimal applications. However, catalytic enantioselective synthesis of structurally diverse boron-stereogenic BODIPYs through intermolecular desymmetrization and BODIPYs with atroposelectivity remains elusive. Here, we showcase rhodium(II)-catalyzed site-specific C-H (hetero)arylations of prochiral BODIPYs and polysubstituted BODIPYs with diazonaphthoquinonesand diazoindenines, providing efficient pathways for the rapid assembly of versatile (hetero)arylated boron-stereogenic and axially chiral BODIPYs through long-range desymmetrization and axial rotational restriction modes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Liver-expressed antimicrobial peptide 2 (LEAP2) is a peptide that counteracts the hunger hormone ghrelin-induced functions. Recently, we showed that vertical sleeve gastrectomy (VSG) did not alter the serum LEAP2 concentration in individuals with obesity. Here, we investigated the effects of VSG in both chow diet (CD)-fed and high-fat diet (HFD)-fed mice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated how the signal intensity ratio (SIR) at the internal auditory canal (IAC) relates to hearing impairment in patients with Meniere's disease (MD).
  • Fifty patients were given a 3D-FLAIR MRI after receiving a contrast agent, allowing for comparisons between the affected and unaffected sides of their IAC.
  • Results showed that the SIR was significantly higher on the affected side and correlated positively with hearing thresholds across all frequencies, suggesting damage to the IAC barrier may influence hearing loss in MD patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alzheimer's diseases (AD) patients suffer from more serious bone loss than cognitively normal subjects at the same age. Type H blood vessels were tightly associated with bone homeostasis. However, few studies have concentrated on bone vascular alteration and its role in AD-related bone loss.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this study, the cooling effect below ambient air temperature, heat dissipation properties and heating energy efficacy of a superomniphobic self-cleaning (SSC) highly emissive (HE) coating were systematically investigated. Except at midday, the SSC-HE coating with an extremely high solar reflectance of 0.985 showed a better cooling effect than a 10-cm-thick polyurethane insulation layer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • β-catenin and STAT3 contribute to colorectal cancer (CRC) progression and immune evasion, with their co-overexpression linked to poor patient outcomes.
  • Traditional small molecule inhibitors struggle to effectively target both proteins due to their mutual activation.
  • A new strategy using nanoengineered peptide PROTACs (NP-PROTACs) has been developed, successfully degrading both β-catenin and STAT3, resulting in improved antitumor effects and enhanced immune responses in CRC treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The identification of molecules within complex mixtures is a major bottleneck in natural products (NPs) research. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has emerged as the main tool for the high-throughput characterization of NPs. The large amount of data sets by LC-MS/MS presents a challenge for data processing and interpretation, and the LC-MS/MS molecular network (MN) is one of the most prominent tools for analyzing large MS/MS data sets, widely used for rapid classification, identification, and structural speculation of unknown compounds.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Immunotherapies hold immense potential for achieving durable potency and long-term survival opportunities in cancer therapy. As vital biological mediators, peptides with high tissue penetration and superior selectivity offer significant promise for enhancing cancer immunotherapies (CITs). However, physicochemical peptide features such as conformation and stability pose challenges to their on-target efficacy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

PLCD3 belongs to the phospholipase C delta group and is involved in numerous biological functions, including cell growth, programmed cell death, and specialization. However, the role of PLCD3 in lung cancer still needs further investigation. This research aimed to investigate if PLCD3 influences glycolytic reprogramming and lung cancer development through the PKC-dependent Rap1 signaling pathway.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The series includes two parts, articulating the two novel avenues of research on intelligent fault diagnosis (FD) for nonlinear feedback control systems. In Part I of the series, we design a novel FD paradigm by elaborating an invertible neural network (INN) for feedback control systems. With the aid of a left manifold, the core idea behind the INN-based FD scheme is as follows: 1) formulation of residual generator used for FD as a projection of system data onto the null space that has the same dimension as system outputs; 2) in a topological space, elaboration of a homeomorphism that delivers an invertible relationship between system outputs and residual signals when the system input is given; and 3) skillful introduction of both the master and slave objective functions to achieve system/parameter identification with information loseless property.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Functional group interconversion is of great significance in organic synthesis. However, aerobic cleavage of C=N bonds to access carbonyl compounds still suffered from some limitations such as harsh reaction conditions, stoichiometric oxidants, poor substrate scope and use of toxic reagents. Herein, we report a catalyst-free and photo-induced aerobic cleavage of C=N bonds to afford diverse carbonyl compounds using oxygen from air as green oxidant.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To compare thulium laser enucleation of the prostate (ThuLEP) with plasma kinetic resection of the prostate (PKRP) in the treatment of BPH.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of 160 cases of BPH treated by ThuLEP (the observation group, n = 80) or PKRP (the control group, n = 80) in our hospital from January 2021 to December 2023. We recorded the operation time, bladder irrigation time, catheter retention time, hospitalization time, postoperative complications, and pre- and postoperative maximum urinary flow rate (Qmax), residual urine volume (PVR), prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and prostate volume, followed by comparison of the data obtained between the two groups of patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF