Publications by authors named "Zi Chao Zhang"

Introduction: Increasing evidence has highlighted rare variants in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, insufficient sample sizes, especially in underrepresented ethnic groups, hinder their investigation. Additionally, their impact on endophenotypes remains largely unexplored.

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Alternative polyadenylation (APA) is a critical post-transcriptional process that generates mRNA isoforms with distinct 3' untranslated regions (3' UTRs), thereby regulating mRNA localization, stability, and translational efficiency. Cell-type-specific APA extensively shapes the diversity of the cellular transcriptome, particularly during cell fate transition. Despite its recognized significance, the precise regulatory mechanisms governing cell-type-specific APA remain unclear.

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Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) significantly affects the prognosis of surgical patients with inguinal hernia. The complex Caprini score, commonly used for postoperative VTE risk assessment, poses practical challenges for surgeons in clinical settings.

Methods: The CHAT-3 trial, a prospective, multicenter, randomized controlled trial, compared a simple three-factor model to assess VTE risk against routine practices in postinguinal hernia surgery (IHS) patients.

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Sleep, an essential component of health and overall well-being, often presents challenges for older individuals who frequently experience sleep disorders characterized by shortened sleep duration and fragmented patterns. These sleep disruptions also correlate with an increased risk of various illnesses in the elderly, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and psychological disorders. Unfortunately, existing drugs for sleep disorders are associated with significant side effects such as cognitive impairment and addiction.

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Positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) or florbetapir (AV45) has been proved effective in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. However, the expensive and radioactive nature of PET has limited its application. Here, employing multi-layer perceptron mixer architecture, we present a deep learning model, namely 3-dimensional multi-task multi-layer perceptron mixer, for simultaneously predicting the standardized uptake value ratios (SUVRs) for FDG-PET and AV45-PET from the cheap and widely used structural magnetic resonance imaging data, and the model can be further used for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis based on embedding features derived from SUVR prediction.

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The balance between cell proliferation and differentiation is essential for maintaining the neural progenitor pool and brain development. Although the mechanisms underlying cell proliferation and differentiation at the transcriptional level have been studied intensively, post-transcriptional regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation remains largely unclear. Here, we show that deletion of the alternative splicing regulator PQBP1 in striatal progenitors results in defective striatal development due to impaired neurogenesis of spiny projection neurons (SPNs).

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Brain imaging genomics is an emerging interdisciplinary field, where integrated analysis of multimodal medical image-derived phenotypes (IDPs) and multi-omics data, bridging the gap between macroscopic brain phenotypes and their cellular and molecular characteristics. This approach aims to better interpret the genetic architecture and molecular mechanisms associated with brain structure, function and clinical outcomes. More recently, the availability of large-scale imaging and multi-omics datasets from the human brain has afforded the opportunity to the discovering of common genetic variants contributing to the structural and functional IDPs of the human brain.

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Mutations in the polyglutamine tract-binding protein 1 (PQBP1) gene are associated with Renpenning syndrome, which is characterized by microcephaly, intellectual deficiency, short stature, small testes, and distinct facial dysmorphism. Studies using different models have revealed that PQBP1 plays essential roles in neural development and function. In this mini-review, we summarize recent findings relating to the roles of PQBP1 in these processes, including in the regulation of neural progenitor proliferation, neural projection, synaptic growth, neuronal survival, and cognitive function via mRNA transcription and splicing-dependent or -independent processes.

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Exploring multimorbidity relationships among diseases is of great importance for understanding their shared mechanisms, precise diagnosis and treatment. However, the landscape of multimorbidities is still far from complete due to the complex nature of multimorbidity. Although various types of biological data, such as biomolecules and clinical symptoms, have been used to identify multimorbidities, the population phenotype information (e.

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Advances in high-throughput experimental technologies promote the accumulation of vast number of biomedical data. Biomedical link prediction and single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) data imputation are two essential tasks in biomedical data analyses, which can facilitate various downstream studies and gain insights into the mechanisms of complex diseases. Both tasks can be transformed into matrix completion problems.

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Mutations in the gene are associated with Renpenning syndrome (RENS1, ). Most cases are characterized by intellectual disability, but a detailed neuropsychological profile has not yet been established. The present case study of a 8.

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Metabotropic glutamate receptor-dependent long-term depression (mGluR-LTD) occurs in diverse brain regions and contributes to the plasticity of behavior, learning, and memory. mGluR-LTD relies on rapid (in minutes) local protein synthesis. Here, we describe a detailed protocol for delivering an interfering peptide into the adult mouse hippocampus.

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Selective identification of newly synthesized proteins is challenging because all proteins, both existing and nascent, have the same amino acid pool and are therefore chemically indistinguishable. L-homopropargylglycine is an amino acid analog of methionine containing an alkyne moiety that can undergo a classic click chemical reaction with azide containing Alexa Fluor. Here, we present an integrated tool based on immunofluorescence staining to accurately trace and localize the newly synthesized protein in isolated primary mouse hepatocytes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Minimally invasive surgery has been shown to effectively reduce inflammation and postoperative risks in IBD patients, aiding in faster recovery.
  • A case study of a 23-year-old male with GSD Ib and IBD demonstrated successful treatment through minimally invasive surgery after he developed complications, confirming that this approach is safe and effective for such patients.
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Autism spectrum disorder is a group of genetically-related developmental disorders of the nervous system. Patients mainly present with core symptoms such as social behavior defects, repetitive stereotyped behaviors, and learning and memory disorders. The mouse models are critical for the studies of the pathogenic mechanisms and potential therapeutic strategies of autism spectrum disorder.

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Sleep is an essential and evolutionarily conserved behavior that is modulated by many environmental factors. Ambient temperature shifting usually occurs during climatic or seasonal change or travel from high-latitude area to low-latitude area that affects animal physiology. Increasing ambient temperature modulates sleep in both humans and Drosophila.

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Eukaryotic elongation factor 2 (eEF2) mediates translocation of peptidyl-tRNA from the ribosomal A site to the P site to promote translational elongation. Its phosphorylation on Thr56 by its single known kinase eEF2K inactivates it and inhibits translational elongation. Extensive studies have revealed that different signal cascades modulate eEF2K activity, but whether additional factors regulate phosphorylation of eEF2 remains unclear.

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Heterotrimeric G proteins mediate a variety of signaling processes by coupling G protein-coupled receptors to intracellular effector molecules. In the α gene encodes several Gαq splice variants, with the Gαq1 isoform protein playing a major role in fly phototransduction. However, α null mutant flies still exhibit a residual light response, indicating that other Gαq splice variants or additional Gq α subunits are involved in phototransduction.

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Motivation: Predicting potential links in biomedical bipartite networks can provide useful insights into the diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases and the discovery of novel drug targets. Computational methods have been proposed recently to predict potential links for various biomedical bipartite networks. However, existing methods are usually rely on the coverage of known links, which may encounter difficulties when dealing with new nodes without any known link information.

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Renpenning syndrome belongs to a group of X-linked intellectual disability disorders. The Renpenning syndrome-associated protein PQBP1 (polyglutamine-binding protein 1) is intrinsically disordered, associates with several splicing factors, and is involved in pre-mRNA splicing. PQBP1 uses its C-terminal YxxPxxVL motif for binding to the splicing factor TXNL4A (thioredoxin like 4A), but the biological function of this interaction has yet to be elucidated.

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Light-induced endocytosis of rhodopsin in the retina is critical for preventing photoreceptor hyperactivity and for the survival of photoreceptor cells. In , this process is mediated by arrestin1 (Arr1). Because Arr1 lacks a clathrin-binding domain required for receptor internalization and the C-terminal sequence that interacts with the β-subunit of the clathrin adaptor protein AP2, the mechanism of how Arr1 mediates endocytosis of the major rhodopsin Rh1 is unclear.

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RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) with prion-like domains (PrLDs) phase transition to functional liquids, which can mature into aberrant hydrogels composed of pathological fibrils that underpin fatal neurodegenerative disorders. Several nuclear RBPs with PrLDs, including TDP-43, FUS, hnRNPA1, and hnRNPA2, mislocalize to cytoplasmic inclusions in neurodegenerative disorders, and mutations in their PrLDs can accelerate fibrillization and cause disease. Here, we establish that nuclear-import receptors (NIRs) specifically chaperone and potently disaggregate wild-type and disease-linked RBPs bearing a NLS.

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The timing of sleep is tightly governed by the circadian clock, which contains a negative transcriptional feedback loop and synchronizes the physiology and behavior of most animals to daily environmental oscillations. However, how the circadian clock determines the timing of sleep is largely unclear. In vertebrates and invertebrates, the status of sleep and wakefulness is modulated by the electrical activity of pacemaker neurons that are circadian regulated and suppressed by inhibitory GABAergic inputs.

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