Publications by authors named "Wenkai Sun"

Unraveling the signaling roles of intermediate complexes is pivotal for G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) drug development. Despite hundreds of GPCR-Gαβγ structures, these snapshots primarily capture the fully activated complex. Consequently, the functions of intermediate GPCR-G protein complexes remain elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

With the rapid development of the modern shipping field, the damage caused by ship pollution to the global inland waterways and marine ecosystems has attracted extensive attention from the international community. However, there are fewer reviews on the environmental hazards of domestic ship sewage and its treatment, and a systematic summary of the environmental hazards posed by ship domestic sewage and its treatment is lacking. Based on summarizing the various environmental hazards brought about by a ship's domestic sewage and the corresponding treatment methods, this study elaborates, in detail, on the specific hazards of the main toxic and hazardous substances contained in a ship's domestic sewage on the environment and organisms, and the treatment methods of the ship's domestic sewage and their treatment effects, such as membrane bioreactor (MBR).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unraveling the signaling roles of intermediate complexes is pivotal for G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) drug development. Despite hundreds of GPCR-Gαβγ structures, these snapshots primarily capture the fully activated complex. Consequently, the functions of intermediate GPCR-G protein complexes remain elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Maternal monitoring of conspecifics is a crucial anti-predator strategy that also protects infants against risks within the social group. This study examines how maternal characteristics, infant characteristics, mother-infant distance, and the social environment affect maternal monitoring behaviors in free-ranging Tibetan macaques (). We observed 12 females with infants and analyzed their visual monitoring patterns.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Collective movement has emerged as a key area of interest in animal behavior. While individual differences are often viewed as a potential threat to group cohesion, growing evidence suggests that these differences can actually influence an animal's behavior as an initiator or follower during collective movements, thereby driving the group's movement and decision-making processes. To resolve the divergence, we asked how personality can affect the dynamics of collective movements in one group of free-ranging Tibetan macaques () in Huangshan, China.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unraveling the signaling roles of intermediate complexes is pivotal for G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) drug development. Despite hundreds of GPCR-Gαβγ structures, these snapshots primarily capture the fully activated end-state complex. Consequently, a comprehensive understanding of the conformational transitions during GPCR activation and the roles of intermediate GPCR-G protein complexes in signaling remain elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: UC is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder of uncertain etiology. However, effective therapeutic drug options for UC are relatively limited. Fraxin represents a principal active constituent within the traditional Chinese medicinal herb known as Cortex Fraxini or Qinpi.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Butylphthalide is one of the first-line drugs for ischemic stroke therapy, while no biosynthetic enzyme for butylphthalide has been reported. Here, we present a haplotype-resolved genome of , a long-cultivated and phthalide-rich medicinal plant in Apiaceae. On the basis of comprehensive screening, four Fe(II)- and 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases and two CYPs were mined and further biochemically verified as phthalide C-4/C-5 desaturases (P4,5Ds) that effectively promoted the forming of ()-3--butylphthalide and butylidenephthalide.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Butylphthalide, a prescription medicine recognized for its efficacy in treating ischemic strokes approved by the State Food and Drug Administration of China in 2005, is sourced from the traditional botanical remedy . While chemical synthesis offers a viable route, limitations in the production of isomeric variants with compromised bioactivity necessitate alternative strategies. Addressing this issue, biosynthesis offers a promising solution.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Soybean (Glycine max) was domesticated from its wild relative Glycine soja. One-hundred-seed weight is one of the most important domesticated traits determining soybean yield; however, its underlying genetic basis remains elusive. We characterized a soybean seed size 1 (sss1) mutant featuring large seeds compared to its wild-type background.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The changes of postmortem corneal opacity are often used to roughly estimate the postmortem interval (PMI) in forensic practice. The difficulty associated with this time estimate is the lack of objective means to rapidly quantify postmortem corneal changes in crime scenes. This study constructed a data analysis model of PMI estimation and implemented an intelligent analysis system for examining the sequential changes of postmortem corneal digital images, named Corneal-Smart Phone, which can be used to quickly estimate PMI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effects of ovarian cancer G-protein-coupled receptor 1 (OGR1) protein on proliferation and apoptosis of breast cancer cells, as well as its molecular mechanism were investigated. The MCF-7 cell line highly expressed OGR1 was constructed by transient transfection of eukaryotic expression vector using breast cancer cells. At the same time, cells were transfected with empty vector as controls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To investigate the correlation between Dickkopf-related protein 1 (DKK1) expression and prognosis of breast cancer.

Methods: The DKK1 expression in breast cancer cell lines was evaluated via reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Western blotting. The DKK1 expression pattern in 85 cases of breast cancer was detected using the immunohistochemical method.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the health consequences of rural-to-urban migration in China. We use a panel dataset from 2003 to 2006 constructed by the Research Center on the Rural Economy at the Ministry of Agriculture in China to investigate the effects of short-term and medium-term migration on health status. By combining propensity-score matching and the difference-in-difference model, we attempt to overcome the migration endogeneity issue and estimate the average treatment effect on the treated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The antioxidant effects of the triterpenoid-rich extracts from Euryale ferox shell (ES) have been confirmed in vitro. This study examined whether the triterpenoid-rich extract from ES eases human hyperglycemia and diabetes caused by metabolic disorders. Normal and streptozocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice were used as controls for the four groups that received the triterpenoid-rich extracts of ES suspended in distilled water orally at doses of 200, 300, 400, 500±2 mg/L.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chemical modulators of macroautophagy (herein referred to as autophagy) have aroused widespread interest among biologists and clinical physicians because of their potential for disease therapy. Pterostilbene (PT), a natural small-molecular compound, has been demonstrated to inhibit oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL)-induced apoptosis in vascular endothelial cells (VECs). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether and how PT could induce VEC autophagy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_session1tce8qp4c17l030lf9cjflqvd45un2so): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once