Alleviation of Liver Dysfunction,Oxidative Stress,and Inflammation Underlines the Protective Effects of Polysaccharides from Cordyceps cicadae on High Sugar/High Fat Diet-Induced Metabolic Syndrome in Rats

This study investigated the protective effects of two polysaccharides (CPA-1 and CPB-2) from Cordyceps cicadae against high fructose/high fat diet (HF/HFD) induced obesity and metabolic disorders in rats. Rats were either fed with normal diet or HF/HFD and treated with CPA-1 and CPB-2 (100 and 300 mg/kg) for 11 weeks. Administration of CPA-1 and CPB-2 significantly and dose dependently reduced body and liver weight, insulin and glucose tolerance, serum insulin and glucose levels. Furthermore, serum and hepatic lipid profiles, liver function enzymes and proinflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6) were markedly reduced. Additionally, CPA-1 and CPB-2 treatment alleviated hepatic oxidative stress by reducing lipid peroxidation level (MDA) and upregulating glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities as well as ameliorated histological alterations through the reduction of hepatic lipid accumulation. These results suggested that the polysaccharides from C. cicadae showed protective effects against HF/HFD induced metabolic disturbances and may be considered as a dietary supplement for treating obesity.     

Complementary Aluminum Nanopatch/Nanohole Arrays for Broad Palettes of Colors

Plasmonics - We investigate aluminum nanopatch/nanohole arrays surrounded by a dielectric material on plastic substrates for large area color printing. In this specific arrangement, metallic...     

Activation of AMPK by Bitter Melon Triterpenoids Involves CaMKKβ

We recently showed that bitter melon-derived triterpenoids (BMTs) activate AMPK and increase GLUT4 translocation to the plasma membrane in vitro, and improve glucose disposal in insulin resistant models in vivo. Here we interrogated the mechanism by which these novel compounds activate AMPK, a leading anti-diabetic drug target. BMTs did not activate AMPK directly in an allosteric manner as AMP or the Abbott compound (A-769662) does, nor did they activate AMPK by inhibiting cellular respiration like many commonly used anti-diabetic medications. BMTs increased AMPK activity in both L6 myotubes and LKB1-deficient HeLa cells by 20–35%. Incubation with the CaMKKβ inhibitor, STO-609, completely attenuated this effect suggesting a key role for CaMKKβ in this activation. Incubation of L6 myotubes with the calcium chelator EGTA-AM did not alter this activation suggesting that the BMT-dependent activation was Ca²⁺-independent. We therefore propose that CaMKKβ is a key upstream kinase for BMT-induced activation of AMPK.     

Genome‐wide detection of CNVs associated with beak deformity in chickens using high‐density 600K SNP arrays

Beak deformity (crossed beaks) is found in several indigenous chicken breeds including Beijing‐You studied here. Birds with deformed beaks have reduced feed intake and poor production performance. Recently, copy number variation (CNV) has been examined in many species and is recognized as a source of genetic variation, especially for disease phenotypes. In this study, to unravel the genetic mechanisms underlying beak deformity, we performed genome‐wide CNV detection using Affymetrix chicken high‐density 600K data on 48 deformed‐beak and 48 normal birds using penncnv . As a result, two and eight CNV regions (CNVRs) covering 0.32 and 2.45 Mb respectively on autosomes were identified in deformed‐beak and normal birds respectively. Further RT‐qPCR studies validated nine of the 10 CNVRs. The ratios of six CNVRs were significantly different between deformed‐beak and normal birds (P < 0.01). Within these six regions, three and 21 known genes were identified in deformed‐beak and normal birds respectively. Bioinformatics analysis showed that these genes were enriched in six GO terms and one KEGG pathway. Five candidate genes in the CNVRs were further validated using RT‐qPCR. The expression of LRIG2 (leucine rich repeats and immunoglobulin like domains 2) was lower in birds with deformed beaks (P < 0.01). Therefore, the LRIG2 gene could be considered a key factor in view of its known functions and its potential roles in beak deformity. Overall, our results will be helpful for future investigations of the genomic structural variations underlying beak deformity in chickens.     

Phrasal Paraphrase Based Question Reformulation for Archived Question Retrieval

Lexical gap in cQA search, resulted by the variability of languages, has been recognized as an important and widespread phenomenon. To address the problem, this paper presents a question reformulation scheme to enhance the question retrieval model by fully exploring the intelligence of paraphrase in phrase-level. It compensates for the existing paraphrasing research in a suitable granularity, which either falls into fine-grained lexical-level or coarse-grained sentence-level. Given a question in natural language, our scheme first detects the involved key-phrases by jointly integrating the corpus-dependent knowledge and question-aware cues. Next, it automatically extracts the paraphrases for each identified key-phrase utilizing multiple online translation engines, and then selects the most relevant reformulations from a large group of question rewrites, which is formed by full permutation and combination of the generated paraphrases. Extensive evaluations on a real world data set demonstrate that our model is able to characterize the complex questions and achieves promising performance as compared to the state-of-the-art methods.     

Draft Genome Sequence of a Novel Bacterial Strain,LSJC7, Belonging to the Family Enterobacteriaceae with Dual Resistance to Arsenic and Tetracycline

Strain LSJC7, with dual resistance to arsenic and tetracycline, was isolated from an antimony tailing in China. Its 16S rRNA gene sequence has the highest similarity to that of Enterobacter cloacae subsp. dissolvens LMG 2683^T (97.02%). Here we present the approximately 4.6-Mbp draft genome sequence of strain LSJC7.     

Module-based construction of plasmids for chromosomal integration of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Integration of an external gene into a fission yeast chromosome is useful to investigate the effect of the gene product. An easy way to knock-in a gene construct is use of an integration plasmid, which can be targeted and inserted to a chromosome through homologous recombination. Despite the advantage of integration, construction of integration plasmids is energy- and time-consuming, because there is no systematic library of integration plasmids with various promoters, fluorescent protein tags, terminators and selection markers; therefore, researchers are often forced to make appropriate ones through multiple rounds of cloning procedures. Here, we establish materials and methods to easily construct integration plasmids. We introduce a convenient cloning system based on Golden Gate DNA shuffling, which enables the connection of multiple DNA fragments at once: any kind of promoters and terminators, the gene of interest, in combination with any fluorescent protein tag genes and any selection markers. Each of those DNA fragments, called a ‘module’, can be tandemly ligated in the order we desire in a single reaction, which yields a circular plasmid in a one-step manner. The resulting plasmids can be integrated through standard methods for transformation. Thus, these materials and methods help easy construction of knock-in strains, and this will further increase the value of fission yeast as a model organism.     

Niche-Specific Requirement for Hyphal Wall protein 1 in Virulence of Candida albicans

Specialized Candida albicans cell surface proteins called adhesins mediate binding of the fungus to host cells. The mammalian transglutaminase (TG) substrate and adhesin, Hyphal wall protein 1 (Hwp1), is expressed on the hyphal form of C. albicans where it mediates fungal adhesion to epithelial cells. Hwp1 is also required for biofilm formation and mating thus the protein functions in both fungal-host and self-interactions. Hwp1 is required for full virulence of C. albicans in murine models of disseminated candidiasis and of esophageal candidiasis. Previous studies correlated TG activity on the surface of oral epithelial cells, produced by epithelial TG (TG1), with tight binding of C. albicans via Hwp1 to the host cell surfaces. However, the contribution of other Tgs, specifically tissue TG (TG2), to disseminated candidiasis mediated by Hwp1 was not known. A newly created hwp1 null strain in the wild type SC5314 background was as virulent as the parental strain in C57BL/6 mice, and virulence was retained in C57BL/6 mice deleted for Tgm2 (TG2). Further, the hwp1 null strains displayed modestly reduced virulence in BALB/c mice as did strain DD27-U1, an independently created hwp1Δ/Δ in CAI4 corrected for its ura3Δ defect at the URA3 locus. Hwp1 was still needed to produce wild type biofilms, and persist on murine tongues in an oral model of oropharyngeal candidiasis consistent with previous studies by us and others. Finally, lack of Hwp1 affected the translocation of C. albicans from the mouse intestine into the bloodstream of mice. Together, Hwp1 appears to have a minor role in disseminated candidiasis, independent of tissue TG, but a key function in host- and self-association to the surface of oral mucosa.     

A New Glabrous Gene (csgl3) Identified in Trichome Development in Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.)

Spines or trichomes on the fruit of cucumbers enhance their commercial value in China. In addition, glabrous mutants exhibit resistance to aphids and therefore their use by growers can reduce pesticide residues. Previous studies have reported two glabrous mutant plants containing the genes, csgl1 and csgl2. In the present study, a new glabrous mutant, NCG157, was identified showing a gene interaction effect with csgl1 and csgl2. This mutant showed the glabrous character on stems, leaves, tendrils, receptacles and ovaries, and there were no spines or tumors on the fruit surface. Inheritance analysis showed that a single recessive gene, named csgl3, determined the glabrous trait. An F₂ population derived from the cross of two inbred lines 9930 (a fresh market type from Northern China that exhibits trichomes) and NCG157 (an American processing type with glabrous surfaces) was used for genetic mapping of the csgl3 gene. By combining bulked segregant analysis (BAS) with molecular markers, 18 markers, including two simple sequence repeats (SSR), nine insertion deletions (InDel) and seven derived cleaved amplified polymorphism sequences (dCAPs), were identified to link to the csgl3 gene. All of the linked markers were used as anchor loci to locate the csgl3 gene on cucumber chromosome 6. The csgl3 gene was mapped between the dCAPs markers dCAPs-21 and dCAPs-19, at genetic distances of 0.05 cM and 0.15 cM, respectively. The physical distance of this region was 19.6 kb. Three markers, InDel-19, dCAPs-2 and dCAPs-11, co-segregated with csgl3. There were two candidate genes in the region, Csa6M514860 and Csa6M514870. Quantitative real-time PCR showed that the expression of Csa6M514870 was higher in the tissues of 9930 than that of NCG157, and this was consistent with their phenotypic characters. Csa6M514870 is therefore postulated to be the candidate gene for the development of trichomes in cucumber. This study will facilitate marker-assisted selection (MAS) of the smooth plant trait in cucumber breeding and provide for future cloning of csgl3.