The adult mammalian cardiomyocyte has a very limited capacity to re-enter the cell cycle and advance into mitosis. Therefore, diseases characterized by lost contractile tissue usually evolve into myocardial remodeling and heart failure. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/cx-5461.html Analyzing the cardiac transcriptome at different developmental stages in a large mammal closer to the human than laboratory rodents may serve to disclose positive and negative cardiomyocyte cell cycle regulators potentially targetable to induce cardiac regeneration in the clinical setting. We thus aimed at characterizing the transcriptomic profiles of the early fetal, late fetal and adult sheep heart employing RNA-seq technique and bioinformatic analysis to detect protein encoding genes that in some of the stages were turned-off, turned-on or differentially expressed. Genes earlier proposed as positive cell cycle regulators such as cyclin A, cdk2, meis2, meis3 and PCNA showed higher expression in fetal hearts and lower in AH, as expected. In contrast, genes previously proposed as cell cycle inhibitors such as meis1, p16 and sav1 tended to be higher in fetal than in adult hearts, suggesting that these genes are involved in cell processes other than cell cycle regulation. Additionally, we described Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment of different sets of genes. GO analysis revealed that differentially expressed gene sets were mainly associated with metabolic and cellular processes. The cell cycle-related genes fam64a, cdc20 and cdk1, and the metabolism-related genes pitx and adipoq showed strong differential expression between fetal and adult hearts, thus being potent candidates to be targeted in human cardiac regeneration strategies.Liquid crystalline polymers with tunable structures on the scale of visible wavelength are important in optical technology due to their enhanced mechanical stability, processability, and structural integrity. Herein, we report a series of cholesteric liquid crystalline (CLC) polyethers with a widely tunable pitch length and a broad CLC phase window through a bottom-up structural design. The well-defined multicomponent polyethers were successfully synthesized by utilizing monomer-activated anionic ring-opening polymerization. Through adjustment of the composition of chiral cholesteryl (Ch) and photochromic azobenzene (Az) mesogenic moieties, rich phase behaviors have been discovered, and a phase boundary diagram was constructed consequently, wherein cholesteric helical superstructures in a broad composition range and temperature window straight down to the glassy state at room temperature were achieved. Particularly, the planar oriented helical superstructures can exhibit widely tunable and switchable reflections over the entire visible range across red, green, and blue colors through temperature and light control, which are closely related to the extraordinary flexibility of the polyether backbone. Their thermo-light dual-responsive properties provide an alternative opportunity to fabricate smart and switchable polymeric LC materials for optical applications.Nacre-like ceramic composites are of importance in a wide range of applications, because of their mechanical properties, combining high mechanical strength and high fracture toughness. Those mechanical properties are the result of strongly aligned platelets glued in a matrix. Different methods exist to shape such a "brick-and-mortar" hierarchical structure. In this paper, we propose to use the phenomenon of heteroaggregation between silica nanoparticles and large alumina platelets. Experimental and numerical results show that silica nanoparticles can adsorb on alumina platelets with good distribution. This adsorption promotes the deagglomeration of alumina that can self-organize in layers by sedimentation. This phenomenon can be exploited to shape alumina-silica nacre-like composites.Ficus hirta Vahl. (Wuzhimaotao) is an edible functional food used for the soup cooking and health products. Seven undescribed phenolic glycosides (1-7), along with 20 analogues, were isolated from the roots of Ficus hirta. Their structures were determined by comprehensive spectroscopic methods (UV, IR, HRESIMS, and NMR), while the absolute configuration of 1 was established by comparison of the experimental and calculated ECD data. The antineuroinflammatory effects of all the compounds were examined by Western blot. Compounds 1 and 11 attenuated the phosphorylation of AKT, JNK, and ERK1/2. In addition, compound 11 inhibited the NF-κB p65 phosphorylation. Our results indicated that compounds 1 and 11 decreased the occurrence of neuroinflammation in BV2 microglia cells, which might be regulated by inhibiting the activity of proteins in NF-κB, MAPK (JNK and ERK1/2), or AKT signaling pathways. Thus, 1 and 11 might exhibit antineuroinflammatory activities and show promise in treating neurodegenerative diseases.The electrification of hydrophobic surfaces is an intensely debated subject in physical chemistry. We theoretically study the ζ potential of hydrophobic surfaces for varying pH and salt concentration by solving the Poisson-Boltzmann and Stokes equations with individual ionic adsorption affinities. Using the ionic surface affinities extracted from the experimentally measured surface tension of the air-electrolyte interface, we first show that the interfacial adsorption and repulsion of small inorganic ions such as H3O+, OH-, HCO3-, and CO32- cannot account for the ζ potential observed in experiments because the surface affinities of these ions are too small. Even if we take hydrodynamic slip into account, the characteristic dependence of the ζ potential on pH and salt concentration cannot be reproduced. Instead, to explain the sizable experimentally measured ζ potential of hydrophobic surfaces, we assume minute amounts of impurities in the water and include the impurities' acidic and basic reactions with water. We find good agreement between our predictions and the reported experimental ζ potential data of various hydrophobic surfaces if we account for impurities that consist of a mixture of weak acids (pKa = 5-7) and weak bases (pKb = 12) at a concentration of the order of 10-7 M.