Lei Cui

• China University of Petroleum, East China

The demand for insulating materials with superior dielectric properties has increased. Among these materials, polymers containing cyclic structure including cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) and cyclic olefin polymer (COP) stand out because of their excellent dielectric properties originating from the pure hydrocarbon structure. Introducing fluorine in...

Cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) is one of the most promising optical materials; however, the brittle COC suffers from issues including a low refractive index. In this contribution, by the introduction of high refractive index comonomers including phenoxy substituted α-olefin (C4OAr), p-tolylthio substituted α-olefin (C4SAr) and carbazolyl substituted...

Background Intestinal inflammation is prevalent in chicken, which results in decreased growth performance and considerable economic losses. Accumulated findings established the close relationship between gut microbiota and chicken growth performance. However, whether gut microbiota impacts chicken growth performance by lessening intestinal inflamma...

To address the issue of hemilabile catalyst in olefin polymerization catalysis, a cyclizing strategy was used to construct novel N-bridged phosphine-carbonyl palladium and nickel catalysts, resulting in improvements on ethylene (co)polymerizations. The N-bridged phosphine-carbonyl Pd catalysts (Pd1−Pd5) and Ni catalysts (Ni1−Ni5) bearing five- to e...

The functionalization of polyolefins through the copolymerization of olefins and polar monomers catalyzed by late transition metals such as nickel and palladium is of academic and industrial significance. In recent years, a variety of versatile catalysts used in these copolymerization reactions have been summarized in many key reviews; however, the...

It has been established that gut microbiota influences chicken growth performance and fat metabolism. However, whether gut microbiota affects chicken growth performance by regulating fat metabolism remains unclear. Therefore, seven‐week‐old chickens with high or low body weight were used in the present study. There were significant differences in b...

In poultry industry, male chickens have a better growth performance than female ones under the same genetic background and diet. Emerging evidences proposed an important role of intestinal microbiota in chicken's growth performance. This study aimed to determine gut microbiota related gender based differences in the growth performance of chickens....

Hemilabile phosphine-carbonyl (P^O) Pd(II) and Ni(II) catalysts usually feature ethylene oligomerization due to the weakly coordinated nature of the carbonyl C=O group. In this contribution, with the aim of designing new structural P^O catalyst for the improvement on olefin (co)polymerization, we developed a N-bridged strategy to overcome this issu...

Background A growing body of evidences suggest critical role of the chicken gut microbiota in growth performance and fat metabolism. However, the underlying mechanism by which the gut microbiota affects chicken growth performance by regulating fat metabolism remains unclear. The purpose of current study was to compare cecal microbial communities be...

The present work aimed at assessing passive, innate, and acquired immunity in piglets from sows supplemented with either organic or inorganic selenium (Se). A total of 12 multiparous pregnant sows were randomly allocated to three groups: selenium-deficient, corn and soy–based diet base diet (BD), 0.3 mg Se/kg as hydroxy-selenomethionine (OH-SeMet),...

A novel dicyanate, 4,4′-biscyanato-2,2′-trifluoromethylbiphenyl (TFMBDCy), and its thermoset were prepared, and their properties were systematically compared to those of polycyanurates derived from bisphenol A dicyanate (BADCy). The TFMBDCy network exhibited a much higher glass transition temperature, enhanced toughness, reduced water uptake, and i...

Motivated by the need for a new generation of α-diimine Ni(II) and Pd(II) catalysts for tuning the catalytic activity, polymer molecular weight, comonomer incorporation, and branching density in ethylene polymerization and copolymerization with polar monomers, a family of α-diimine Ni(II) and Pd(II) catalysts Ipty-Ni1-4 and Ipty-Pd1-4 derived from...

The thymus is a lobulated unique lymphoid immune organ that plays a critical role in the selection, development, proliferation, and differentiation of T cells. The thymus of developing chickens undergoes continued morphological alterations; however, the biomolecular and transcriptional dynamics of the postnatal thymus in avian species is not clear...

By utilizing an efficient strategy on the combination of the most bulky and the least bulky substituents into the ortho-N-aryl groups of alfa-diimine ligands, a new class of unsymmetrically monosubstituted (H/CHAr2) alfa-diimine nickel complexes Ni-1~5 and palladium complexes Pd-1~5 with trans- and cis- forms was synthesized and comprehensively ide...

Ferritins play vital roles in maintenance of iron homeostasis as iron storage proteins. Recently, the immune function of ferritins have attracted increasing attention, especially their roles in defense against pathogenic infections. However, the immune regulatory mechanism of fish ferritins are not well known. In the present study, comparative digi...

A class of sterically very bulky aliphatic/aromatic phosphine-sulfonate ligands L1~L4 and the corresponding neutral palladium complexes 1~4 {[κ2(P,O)-(menthyl)ArP(C6H4SO2O)]PdMe(pyr)} (1: Ar = 2-(2',6'-(MeO)2C6H3)C6H4; 2: Ar = 2-(C6H5)C6H4; 3: Ar = 2-(2',6'-F2C6H3)C6H4; 4: Ar = (MeO)3C6H2) was synthesized and comprehensively identified by NMR spect...

Toll like receptor 4 (TLR4), eosinophils and mast cells play significant role in host immunity during several pathogenic infections. However in vivo tissue expression of TLR4 and distribution pattern of eosinophils and mast cells in chicken bursa of Fabricius (BF) during Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (STm) infection is poorly studied. The...

Spleen is one of the crucial sites for cellular and humoral immunity but it easily damaged during pathogenic infections resulting in immunosuppression. The current study was therefore performed to explore the mechanism of acute spleen injury induced by salmonella lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in young chicks. Healthy one-day-old Cobb strain broiler chic...

We investigated the mechanisms that induce atrophy of the chicken bursa of Fabricius (BF) upon lipopolysaccharide (LPS) treatment in young chicks. LPS treatment resulted in ~36% decrease in bursal weight within 36 h (P < 0.01). Histological analysis showed infiltration of eosinophilic heterophils and nucleated oval shaped RBCs in or near blood vess...

Iron is an essential microelement for almost all living organisms, while an excess of iron is toxic, thus maintenance of iron homeostasis is vital. As iron storage protein, ferritin plays an important role in iron metabolism. In the present study, we cloned and characterized the ferritin H subunit from Megalobrama amblycephala, termed as MamFerH. A...

NLRC (the nucleotide-oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptor subfamily C) consists of teleost-specific NLRs (NOD-like receptors) and plays pivotal roles in microbial recognition and regulation of innate immune response. In this study, we cloned and characterized a NLRC3-like gene (MamNLRC3-like) from blunt snout bream (Megalobrama amblycephala)...

Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is one of the most important multifunctional cytokines, playing essential roles in mediating the innate and adaptive immune responses. In this study, il-6 gene and its promoter from blunt snout bream, Megalobrama amblycephala, were characterized, and its expression at the transcript level in healthy fish and after bacterial inf...

Intelectin is a recently discovered lectin that plays vital roles in the innate immune response, iron metabolism and early embryogenesis. The structure, expression pattern and function of intelectin in mammals and amphibians have been well studied, while not well known in fish. In this study, we cloned a intelectin (MamINTL) gene from blunt snout b...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules that play key roles in regulation of various biological processes. In order to better understand the biological significance of miRNAs in the context of Aeromonas hydrophila infection in Megalobrama amblycephala, small RNA libraries obtained from fish liver at 0 (non-infection), 4, and 24 h post infection...

Four DNA extraction protocols from the fish scales of Cyprinus carpio were compared. The DNAs obtained from all the protocols were tested by PCR and the DNAs extracted using protocol 1 and 2 were also tested by restriction analysis. The results indicated that all four protocols extracted DNA suitable for PCR amplification. However, variations in th...

To determine the genotype with better traits for aquaculture practices of the loach, factorial crosses were made among diploid (D), tetraploid (T) dojo loach, Misgurnus anguillicaudatus, and large-scale loach, Paramisgurnus dabryanus (P), producing DD, DT, DP, TD, TT, TP, PD, PT, and PP genotypes (female listed first). The growth performance and su...

Natural occurrence of pentaploid loach, Misgurnus anguillicaudatus discovered from Liangzi Lake area, Hubei Province, central China, is reported here for the first time. The evidences from karyotyping, DNA content analysis and nuclear volume measurements were described to confirm the pentaploid nature of the identified individual. This individual w...

Levels of seven hemolymph parameters (considered as indicators of physiological and immune status of organisms) in pond-reared (PR) and lake pen-cultured (PC) adult Chinese mitten crabs sampled from three experimental sites viz., a pond at Huangjin Lake area, a net-pen in the Huangjin Lake and a pond at Lu Lake area were analysed. Two sites in the...