Publications by authors named "WenJie Du"

Article Synopsis
  • The generation of specific molecules is important in fields like biology and drug discovery, but existing models struggle with complex customization based on detailed language.
  • TextSMOG is a new method that combines language and diffusion models to allow for text-guided small molecule generation, enhancing stability and diversity.
  • Experimental results demonstrate that TextSMOG effectively uses textual descriptions to generate 3D molecular structures tailored to complex requests.
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Dissociation, characterized by altered consciousness and perception, underlies multiple mental disorders, but the specific neuronal subtypes involved remain elusive. In mice, we find that dissociation-inducing doses of ketamine significantly inhibit retrosplenial cortex (RSC) parvalbumin interneurons (PV-INs), enhancing delta oscillations (1-3 Hz) and delta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling (δ-γ PAC) and inducing dissociation-like behaviors. Optogenetic inhibition of RSC PV-INs triggers delta oscillations, δ-γ PAC, and some dissociation-like behaviors without ketamine.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how the ventral pallidum (VP) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) brain regions interact and influence drug-seeking behavior after cocaine withdrawal in rats.
  • Findings show that motivation for drug-seeking increases after withdrawal, linked to heightened activity in the VP and changes in the NAc-VP pathway.
  • The results suggest that maintaining proper function of the NAc-VP pathway could be crucial in reducing the desire for drugs after extended withdrawal, pointing to potential treatment strategies for preventing relapse.
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Background: Serum vitamin B12 and α-Klotho are important markers associated with aging. Limited studies have been conducted on the relationship between vitamin B12 and α-Klotho.

Objectives: This study investigated the relationship between circulating α-Klotho and vitamin B12.

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Background: Leucine-rich α-2 glycoprotein 1 (LRG1) is associated with various inflammatory lung diseases. Nevertheless, the connection between LRG1 and adult community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) individuals was still not well understood. Through a prospective cohort study, the correlations of serum LRG1 with severity and prognosis were evaluated in CAP patients.

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While a hippocampal-cortical dialogue is generally thought to mediate memory consolidation, which is crucial for engram function, how it works remains largely unknown. Here, we examined the interplay of neural signals from the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), a neocortical region, and from the hippocampus in memory consolidation by simultaneously recording sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) of dorsal hippocampal CA1 and neural signals of RSC in free-moving mice during the delayed spatial alternation task (DSAT) and subsequent sleep. Hippocampal-RSC coordination during SWRs was identified in nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, reflecting neural reactivation of decision-making in the task, as shown by a peak reactivation strength within SWRs.

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The operation of membrane-based reactors is inevitably challenged by fouling. The driving force in these reactors is not only critical for water passage through membranes but also significantly influences fouling, such as biocake formation. This study investigated the differences between biocakes formed under transmembrane pressure (TMP) and forward osmosis (FO) conditions, specifically focusing on their components, spatial structures, and microbial communities.

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Silk proteins, as natural macromolecules, have extensive applications in biomaterials and biomedicine. In the silkworm, the expression of silk protein genes is negatively associated with ecdysone during the molt stage, while it is positively correlated with juvenile hormone during the intermolt stage. In our previous study, overexpression of an isoform Z2 of Broad Complex (BmBrC-Z2), an ecdysone early response factor, significantly reduced the expression of silk protein genes.

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Ketamine (KET) and isoflurane (ISO) are two widely used general anesthetics, yet their distinct and shared neurophysiological mechanisms remain elusive. In this study, we conducted a comparative analysis of the effects of KET and ISO on c-Fos expression across the mouse brain, utilizing hierarchical clustering and c-Fos-based functional network analysis to evaluate the responses of individual brain regions to each anesthetic. Our findings reveal that KET activates a wide range of brain regions, notably in the cortical and subcortical nuclei involved in sensory, motor, emotional, and reward processing, with the temporal association areas (TEa) as a strong hub, suggesting a top-down mechanism affecting consciousness by primarily targeting higher order cortical networks.

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Introduction: Sepsis is a pathogenic syndrome of prolonged excessive inflammation and immunosuppression produced by invading pathogens. Programmed cell death 4 (PDCD4) may be implicated in a range of inflammatory lesions, and this study aimed to confirm the involvement of PDCD4 in septic lung injury.

Materials And Methods: Mice and bronchial epithelial 16HBE cells were separately subjected to CLP and LPS to generate in vivo and in vitro models.

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Accurately and rapidly acquiring the microscopic properties of a material is crucial for catalysis and electrochemistry. Characterization tools, such as spectroscopy, can be a valuable tool to infer these properties, and when combined with machine learning tools, they can theoretically achieve fast and accurate prediction results. However, on the path to practical applications, training a reliable machine learning model is faced with the challenge of uneven data distribution in a vast array of non-negligible solvent types.

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Background: Analgesic tolerance due to long-term use of morphine remains a challenge for pain management. Morphine acts on μ-opioid receptors and downstream of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase signaling pathway to activate the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway. Rheb is an important regulator of growth and cell-cycle progression in the central nervous system owing to its critical role in the activation of mTOR.

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Epilepsy is a progression of development and advancement over time. However, the molecular features of epilepsy were poorly studied from a dynamic developmental perspective. We intend to investigate the key mechanisms in the process of epilepsy by exploring the roles of stage-specifically expressed genes.

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Artificial chiral materials and nanostructures with strong and tuneable chiroptical activities, including sign, magnitude, and wavelength distribution, are useful owing to their potential applications in chiral sensing, enantioselective catalysis, and chiroptical devices. Thus, the inverse design and customized manufacturing of these materials is highly desirable. Here, we use an artificial intelligence (AI) guided robotic chemist to accurately predict chiroptical activities from the experimental absorption spectra and structure/process parameters, and generate chiral films with targeted chiroptical activities across the full visible spectrum.

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Molecular property prediction is a crucial task in various fields and has recently garnered significant attention. To achieve accurate and fast prediction of molecular properties, machine learning (ML) models have been widely employed due to their superior performance compared to traditional methods by trial and error. However, most of the existing ML models that do not incorporate 3D molecular information are still in need of improvement, as they are mostly poor at differentiating stereoisomers of certain types, particularly chiral ones.

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Objective: Little evidence exists on the effect of 17beta-estradiol plus norethisterone acetate on all the anthropometric indices. Hence, this systematic review and meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials was conducted to give an evidence-based report on the effect of 17beta-estradiol plus norethisterone acetate on anthropometric indices.

Methods: The literature search was executed in databases including PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, and Google Scholar to recognize clinical trials that examined the influence of 17beta-estradiol plus norethisterone acetate on obesity indices from database inception to Jan 2023.

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Although the negative effects coming along with opiate withdrawal are in part modulated by L-type calcium channels (LTCCs), the distinctive physiological properties and functions of LTCCs subtypes suggest differential roles of subtypes during withdrawal. The present study aimed to examine the contributions of LTCC subtypes, Ca1.2 and Ca1.

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In view of the complex nonlinear interaction mechanism between acoustic waves and damage in vibration sound modulation technology, this paper derives the kinematic equilibrium equation for linear elastic materials with cracks undergoing infinitesimal deformation using structural mechanics theory. The weak form of the equation is derived by applying the principle of virtual work to calculate the virtual work due to nonlinear changes in crack spacing. This paper also explains the physical origin of high harmonic and sideband signals in the system displacement solution.

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Background: Patients with T1 stage early colorectal cancer (CRC) can be treated with radical surgery or endoscopic surgery. Endoscopic surgery has a number of advantages, including minimal trauma and a rapid recovery. However, it cannot remove regional lymph nodes to assess whether there is lymph node metastasis.

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Neuronal voltage changes which are dependent on chloride transporters and channels are involved in forming neural functions during early development and maintaining their stability until adulthood. The intracellular chloride concentration maintains a steady state, which is delicately regulated by various genes coding for chloride transporters and channels (GClTC) on the plasmalemma; however, the synergistic effect of these genes in central nervous system disorders remains unclear. In this study, we first defined 10 gene clusters with similar temporal expression patterns, and identified 41 GClTC related to brain developmental process.

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The rapid progress of machine learning (ML) in predicting molecular properties enables high-precision predictions being routinely achieved. However, many ML models, such as conventional molecular graph, cannot differentiate stereoisomers of certain types, particularly conformational and chiral ones that share the same bonding connectivity but differ in spatial arrangement. Here, we designed a hybrid molecular graph network, Chemical Feature Fusion Network (CFFN), to address the issue by integrating planar and stereo information of molecules in an interweaved fashion.

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Over the last two decades the combination of brain slice patch clamp electrophysiology with optogenetic stimulation has proven to be a powerful approach to analyze the architecture of neural circuits and (experience-dependent) synaptic plasticity in such networks. Using this combination of methods, originally termed channelrhodopsin-assisted circuit mapping (CRACM), a multitude of measures of synaptic functioning can be taken. The current review discusses their rationale, current applications in the field, and their associated caveats.

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Infusing "chemical wisdom" should improve the data-driven approaches that rely exclusively on historical synthetic data for automatic retrosynthesis planning. For this purpose, we designed a chemistry-informed molecular graph (CIMG) to describe chemical reactions. A collection of key information that is most relevant to chemical reactions is integrated in CIMG:NMR chemical shifts as vertex features, bond dissociation energies as edge features, and solvent/catalyst information as global features.

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Air pollution is a major obstacle to future sustainability, and traffic pollution has become a large drag on the sustainable developments of future metropolises. Here, combined with the large volume of real-time monitoring data, we propose a deep learning model, iDeepAir, to predict surface-level PM concentration in Shanghai megacity and link with MEIC emission inventory creatively to decipher urban traffic impacts on air quality. Our model exhibits high-fidelity in reproducing pollutant concentrations and reduces the MAE from 25.

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Objective: To assess the effect of gender factors on serum leptin levels in patients with diabetes mellitus.

Methods: To remove any studies that indicated a relationship between leptin-based inflammatory variables and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in particular patient categories, a comprehensive search of all articles published between July 2019 and June 2021 was performed on PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, and EBSCO Host, including Academic Search Premier, Africa-Wide Information, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. A summary description of the combined analysis across multiple centers, regions, and continents will help us better understand the effect of gender on serum leptin levels in patients with diabetes.

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Synopsis of recent research by authors named "WenJie Du"

  • - Wenjie Du's recent research spans diverse fields, including neuroscience, bioprocess engineering, and materials science, reflecting a strong focus on understanding intricate biological processes and their applications.
  • - Key findings highlight the coordinated interactions between the hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex during spatial memory tasks, the impact of driving forces on biocake formation in membrane-based bioreactors, and the role of small G-protein Rheb in regulating morphine tolerance, suggesting significant implications for pain management.
  • - Additionally, Du's work employs innovative techniques such as machine learning for molecular property predictions and AI-guided design for creating chiral materials, aiming to advance both fundamental science and practical applications in various industries.