Effects of Transcranial Magneto-acoustic Electrical Stimulation on Discharge propagation in feed-forward neural network

The mammalian brain has an extremely complex, diversified and highly modular structure, and information dissemination in the modular brain network affects various brain diseases. Although a variety of neuromodulation techniques have been used to study the discharge characteristics of neural networks, the effects of transcranial magneto-acoustic electrical stimulation(TMAES) have rarely been mentioned. Based on the excitatory and inhibitory Izhikevich neuron model, we constructs a feed-forward neural network connected by electrical synapses and chemical synapses, and analyzes the firing frequency of the neural network under TMAES and magnetic stimulation and the differences in each layer types of firing patterns of neurons. The results showed that the discharge patterns of neurons in each layer were different, the discharge frequency of inhibitory neurons was higher than that of excited neurons, and the stimulation signal could be transmitted to the whole network layer.The maximum discharge frequency of neural network connected by electrical coupling can reach 0.94kHz, and the discharge frequency of neural network connected by chemical coupling is less than 0.5 kHz.With the increase of coupling degree, the discharge frequency of neurons in each network layer under TMAES is much greater than that under magnetic stimulation.When the induced current is less than 26.5μA/cm 2 , magnetic stimulation can promote the inhibitory neurons, and TMAES has a variety of regulatory effects on the inhibitory neurons in the neural network. The results show that TMAES has better regulation effect than magnetic stimulation, and the regulation effect is affected by neural network structure and stimulation parameters.

AC-motif: a DNA motif containing adenine and cytosine repeat plays a role in gene regulation

I-motif or C4 is a four-stranded DNA structure with a protonated cytosine:cytosine base pair (C+:C) found in cytosine-rich sequences. We have found that oligodeoxynucleotides containing adenine and cytosine repeats form a stable secondary structure at a physiological pH with magnesium ion, which is similar to i-motif structure, and have named this structure ‘adenine:cytosine-motif (AC-motif)’. AC-motif contains C+:C base pairs intercalated with putative A+:C base pairs between protonated adenine and cytosine. By investigation of the AC-motif present in the CDKL3 promoter (AC-motifCDKL3), one of AC-motifs found in the genome, we confirmed that AC-motifCDKL3 has a key role in regulating CDKL3 gene expression in response to magnesium. This is further supported by confirming that genome-edited mutant cell lines, lacking the AC-motif formation, lost this regulation effect. Our results verify that adenine-cytosine repeats commonly present in the genome can form a stable non-canonical secondary structure with a non-Watson–Crick base pair and have regulatory roles in cells, which expand non-canonical DNA repertoires.

Research Progress on the Regulation Effect of Acupuncture on Intestinal Flora

More and more evidences show that the imbalance of intestinal flora is closely related to the occurrence of diseases. Through the regulation of intestinal microecology to prevent and treat diseases, it becomes a new entry point to treat diseases. As a typical representative of non-drug therapy, acupuncture and moxibustion plays an obvious role in regulating intestinal flora imbalance. This paper summarizes the effect and mechanism of acupuncture and moxibustion intervention on intestinal flora in the past ten years to provide more evidence for the treatment of diseases caused by intestinal flora imbalance.