Macrophages are driven to form distinct functional phenotypes in response to different immunological stimuli, in a process widely referred to as macrophage polarization. Transcriptional regulators that guide macrophage polarization in response to a given trigger remain largely unknown. In this study, we interrogate the programmable landscape in macrophages to find regulatory panels that determine the precise polarization state that a macrophage is driven to. Towards this, we configure an integrative network analysis pipeline that utilizes macrophage transcriptomes in response to 28 distinct stimuli and reconstructs contextualized human gene regulatory networks, and identifies epicentres of perturbations in each case. We find that these contextualized regulatory networks form a spectrum of thirteen distinct clusters with M1 and M2 at the two ends. Using our computational pipeline, we identify combinatorial panels of epicentric regulatory factors (RFs) for each polarization state. We demonstrate that a set of three RFs i.e., CEBPB, NFE2L2 and BCL3, is sufficient to change the polarization destination from M1 to M2. siRNA knockdown of the 3-RF set in THP1 derived M0 cells, despite exposure to an M1 stimulant, significantly attenuated the shift to M1 phenotype, and instead increased the expression of M2 markers. Single knockdown of each RF also showed a similar trend. The siRNA-mediated knockdown of the 3-RF set rendered the macrophages hyper-susceptible to Staphylococcus aureus infection, demonstrating the importance of these factors in modulating immune responses. Overall, our results provide insights into the transcriptional mechanisms underlying macrophage polarization and identify key regulatory factors that may be targeted to modulate immune responses.
We investigate the implementation of two branch polarization diversity antennas in PCS 1900 systems. The received signal strength and signal quality are measured for suburban areas, indoors and on the freeway. The diversity gain is specified by comparing, at a given signal quality level, the median signal strength for the diversity configurations with median signal strength of the no-diversity configuration. The results indicate that polarization diversity performs as well as space diversity.
A new principle of a solar slot antenna is presented. The slot antenna integrates amorphous silicon solar cells which are directly grown on the ground plane where the slot antenna is cut. To facilitate the deposition of the solar cells, stainless steel was used for the ground plane. The effect on the efficiency of the antenna of this rather unusual choice for the conducting ground plane is also described.
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