Youyu Zhang

Xiamen University | XMU · Department of Electronic Science

Vibrio is a rod-shaped Gram-negative bacteria, which is widely distributed in marine and estuarine environments worldwide. It is an important component of the aquatic ecosystem and plays an important role in biogeochemical cycle. Its population dynamics are usually affected by climate and seasonal factors. Most of the Vibrios in the environment are...

Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), an important nuclear receptor, regulates the cellular response to environmental stressors. It is well known for its critical functions in toxicology, but is currently considered an essential regulator of diseases, with specific modulatory effects on immune, antimicrobial and inflammatory responses. The present chapt...

The study of interactions between biomolecules and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is of great importance in CNT-based drug delivery systems and biomedical devices. In this work, the transport of polyarginine (R8) peptide through CNTs under an external electric field was investigated via all-atom molecular dynamics (AAMD) simulation. It was found that the...

Effective induction of targeted cancer cells apoptosis with minimum side effects has always been the primary objective for anti‐tumor therapy. In this study, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are employed for their unique ability to target tumors and amplify the localized electric field due to the high aspect ratio. Highly efficient and cancer cell specific...

Looking for a safe and effective cancer therapy for patients is becoming an important and promising research direction. Nanosecond pulsed electric field (nsPEF) has been known as a potential non-thermal therapeutic technique with few side effects in pre-clinical studies. On the other hand, Paclitaxel (PTX), as a common chemotherapeutic agent, shows...

Pseudomonas plecoglossicida, a temperature dependent bacterial pathogen in fish, expresses rpoE gene that is sensitive to temperature and probably critical for pathogen virulence and disease development. In this study, the rpoE silence strain rpoE-RNAi-1 was constructed by gene knock-down. The rpoE-RNAi-1 displayed significant changes in biofilm fo...

The processes of single polyarginine (R8) peptide penetration through planar and vesicle membranes under an external electric field are simulated via a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) simulation. The results show that the external electric field can greatly enhance the penetration possibility of the R8 peptide through membranes. For differ...

MRI-based electrical properties tomography, a noninvasive technique for characterizing electrical conductivity and permittivity of human tissues, has been developed for the diagnosis of cancer and specific absorption rate quantification since 1991, based on the distortion of radio frequency magnetic field in MRI. For high-contrast tissues, the volu...

The anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor effects of berberine, a traditional Chinese medicine, were separately discovered in pathological intestinal tissues. However, whether the anti-inflammatory effect of berberine contributes to its anti-tumor effect on colitis-associated colorectal cancer (CACRC) remains unknown. In the present study, we found that...

Purpose: To provide high-quality and high-contrast magnetic susceptibility mapping, a 3D MR reconstruction method for magnetic susceptibility based on the magnetic field volume integral equation with the variational Born iterative method (VBIM) is developed. Methods: Three-dimensional magnetic susceptibility is reconstructed from the positive ro...

Musk xylene (MX) is a widely used synthetic nitro musk. Although the persistence and bioaccumulation of the synthetic musks are of concern since the nineteenth century, knowledge concerning the toxicity and environmental risks, especially the carcinogenicity is still limited. In the present study, the normal human hepatic cell line L02 was used to...

An enhanced understanding of the interactions between charged nanoparticles (CNPs) and a curved vesicle membrane may have important implications for the design of nanocarrier agents and drug delivery systems. In this work, coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) simulations of the CNPs with vesicles were performed to evaluate the effects of hydrop...

Exo70, a member of the exocyst complex, is involved in cell exocytosis, migration, invasion and autophagy. However, the expression regulation and function of Exo70 in hepatocellular carcinoma are still poorly understood. In this study, we found Exo70 expression in human hepatoma cells was greatly reduced after knocking down hepatic nuclear factor 4...

Growing evidence indicates that there is an emerging link between environmental pollution and cardiac hypertrophy, while the mechanism is unclear. The objective of this study was to examine whether phenanthrene (Phe) could cause cardiac hypertrophy, and elucidate the molecular mechanisms involved. We found that: 1) Phe exposure increased the heart...

A concise, protecting-group-free total synthesis of (-)-jiadifenolide, a synthetically challenging seco-prezizaane sesquiterpene with potent neurotrophic activity, is reported. The convergent route features a SmI2/H2O-mediated stereoselective reductive cyclization, an unprecedented formal [4 + 1] annulative tetrahydrofuran-forming reaction and prog...

Domoic acid (DA) is a highly toxic phycotoxin that is generated from marine diatoms Pseudonitzschia spp. It has been found that bivalves or cephalopods can accumulate DA to a high level through their feeding activities and cause illness or death in consumers. Zebrafish have been used as a model to investigate and characterize the developmental toxi...

There is a growing recognition that the toxic effects of chemical mixtures are been an important issue in toxicological sciences. Tributyltin (TBT) and Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) are widespread pollutants that occur simultaneously in the aquatic environments. This study was designed to examine comprehensively the combined effects of TBT and BaP on zebraf...

Benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) is a representative polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH), which is ubiquitous in the environment. The toxic effects of BaP on fish embryos have been described in detail, but some potentially toxic effects of BaP might have been neglected owing to the limitations of traditional techniques. In the present research, global transc...

Recent studies show that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) may be a candidate cause of developmental defects of the retina, but the mechanism is still unclear. We evaluated the mechanism(s) underlying PAH-induced retinal development defects due to exposure to environmental concentrations of Phenanthrene (Phe) in zebrafish. We found that expos...

It is widely accepted that the most abundant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in weathered crude oils is cardiotoxic. Although PAHs toxic endpoints show strong correlation with the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a ligand activated transcription factor, and is thought to be a potent inducer of cytochrome P4501A, the action mechanism of PAHs...

It is reported that the most abundant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in weathered crude oils are cardiotoxic. However, the action mechanism of PAHs on vertebrate cardiovascular development and disease is unclear. In the present study, the cardiac morphology and functioning of zebrafish embryos exposed to benzo[a]pyrene [B(a)P], as a high-r...