Background Vitamin D binding protein ( VDBP ) is an essential plasma carrier protein, which plays possible roles in reproductive health, disease and so on. However, the effects of VDBP on immunity have not been fully studied and the pertinent literatures remain very limited. Objective In this study, we introduced the exogenous VDBP into DC2.4 and established a stable DC2.4/ VDBP cell line to explore the role of this gene in immunity. Methods Dendritic cells (DCs), as the most effective antigen presenting cells (APC) found so far, are directly involved in regulating some innate immunity. In order to evaluate the biological role of VDBP in DCs, we stably overexpressed VDBP in DCs, and conducted Cell Counting Kit‑8 (CCK-8 kit) and flow cytometry to detect changes in cell function. CCK-8 kit was used to monitor the viability of DCs after gene overexpression, and flow cytometry was used to detect changes in cell cycle distribution and apoptosis. Subsequently, in order to reveal the mechanism of VDBP regulating DCs, we adopted RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). Results CCK-8 results revealed VDBP successfully inhibited viability of DCs. Besides, we found that overexpression of this gene greatly promoted apoptosis and obviously altered the cell cycle distribution of DCs in G1 and G2 phases. Moreover, RNA-seq was carried out and 151 differently expression genes (DEGs) were obtained. In addition, gene differential expression analysis showed that most of them were uniformly enriched in immunity-related pathways. Conclusion These results indicated that VDBP greatly repressed proliferation, facilitated apoptosis and changed cell cycle in DCs via altering the expression levels of gene associated with their cellular immunity.

Introduction: Insomnia, one of the most common mental disorders, not only affects the quality of life, but also damages physical and mental health. Therefore, it is very necessary to explore the molecular mechanism of insomnia and find some suitable treatments. At present, methods of using drugs to treat insomnia are not satisfactory due to lack of evidences and side effects. Hence, development of non-drug treatments is particularly important. Tuina manipulations, a Chinese massage method, has achieved certain therapeutic effects on injuries, rheumatism, neurological diseases and other types of diseases. We have treated patient with insomnia by Tuina manipulations, and obtained therapeutic effects indeed. Methods: In the current study, assessments were performed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the insomnia severity index (ISI). iTRAQ (isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantitation) quantitative proteomics was used to analyze plasma samples taken from the Healthy Control (HC) group, insomnia patients group (before Tuina treatment, BTT) and insomnia-therapy group (after Tuina treatment, ATT) to identify the molecular correlation of insomnia. Results: The results showed that the PSQI score and ISI score of the ATT group were significantly lower than those of BTT, and the difference was statistically significant. In addition, the proteomics results show that in BTT vs. HC, the expression of many immune-related and stress-related proteins is out of control, the expression of many immune-related and stress-related proteins were out of control, and it revealed that Tuina manipulations had the capacities to regulate expression of immune-related and stress-related proteins in ATT vs. BTT, suggesting that Tuina manipulations may improve insomnia by regulating immune-related and stress-related proteins. The proteomics verification results had been verified by commercial ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay. Conclusion: All in all, our study not only found a good way to treat insomnia, but also provided a research foundation for improving insomnia.

Insomnia, one of the most common mental disorder, not only affects the quality of life, but also damages physical and mental health. Therefore, it is very necessary to explore the molecular mechanism of insomnia and find some suitable treatments. At present, methods of using drugs to treat insomnia is not satisfactory due to lack of evidences and side effects. Hence, development of non-drug treatments is particularly important. Tuina, a Chinese massage method, has achieved certain therapeutic effects on injuries, rheumatism, neurological diseases and other types of diseases. We have treated patient with insomnia by Tuina, and obtained therapeutic effects indeed. In the current study, we used iTRAQ (isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantitation) quantitative proteomics to analyze plasma samples taken from the healthy control (HC) group, insomnia patients group (before Tuina treatment, BTT) and insomnia-therapy group (after Tuina treatment, ATT) to identify the molecular correlation of insomnia. In BTT vs HC, we found that the expression of many immune-related and stress-related proteins were out of control, and it revealed that Tuina had the capacities to regulate expression of immune-related and stress-related proteins in ATT vs BTT, suggesting that Tuina may improve insomnia by regulating immune-related and stress-related proteins. The proteomics verification results had been verified by commercial ELISA(Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. All in all,Our study not only found a good way to treat insomnia, but also provided a research foundation for improving insomnia.