The rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum L) is an exotic fruit native to the Southeast Asia and currently cultivated in different tropical areas, among them in southern México. It is characterized by its ...nutritionals and functionals properties and has been relevant for its commercialization and acceptance in different countries and Mexico represents one of the main producers and exporter of rambutan in the world.
In this review, we summarize information about of the bioactive compounds present in the rambutan fruit, together with the nutritionals properties that it presents as a functional food, with a focus on its by-products (pulp, seed and peel). The rambutan fruit contains important bioactive compounds, mainly the peel has a high content of antioxidants which are of interest in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.
Extracts of rambutan fruit, mainly from the peel, have been shown to possess phytochemical compounds that exhibit antioxidant, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anti-hypoglycemic and anti-proliferative effects in various in vitro and in vivo tests. However, it is necessary to further analyze the nutritional and functional potential of this fruit, the therapeutic mechanisms involved and to develop its industrial process as a functional or nutraceutical food product.
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•A description of the rambutan fruit is made about its composition in peel, pulp and seed.•Rambutan peel and seed wastes are source of bioactive compounds for use in food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries.•Review of nutritional and functional properties of Nephelium lappaceum and the main phytochemical compounds identified.•Patents are reported for the first time in Nephelium Lappaceum.
Aims
To determine the seasonal occurrence and diversity of norovirus (NoV) and human adenovirus (HAdV) in groundwater from sinkholes, and brackish water used for recreational activities in the karst ...aquifer of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
Methods and results
Hollow fibre ultrafiltration was used to concentrate viruses and standard plaque assay methods were used to enumerate somatic and F+ specific coliphages as viral indicators. Real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays were used to estimate the number of genome copies for NoV strains GI, and GII, and HAdVs. The predominant NoV genotypes and HAdV serotypes were identified by comparative sequence analysis. Somatic and male F+ specific coliphages were detected at concentrations up to 94 and 60 plaque‐forming units per 100 ml respectively. The NoV genogroup I (GI) was associated with 50% of the sampled sites during the rainy season only, at concentrations ranging from 120 to 1600 genome copies per litre (GC l−1). The NoV genogroup II (GII) was detected in 30 and 40% of the sampled sites during the rainy and dry seasons, respectively, at concentrations ranging from 10 to 290 GC l−1. During the rainy and dry seasons, HAdVs were detected in 20% of the sites, at concentrations ranging from 24 to 690 GC l−1. Identification of viral types revealed the presence of NoV GI.2, GII.Pe, GII.P16 and GII.P17, and HAdV F serotypes 40 and 41.
Conclusions
These findings demonstrate that NoVs and HAdVs are prevalent as virus contaminants in the karst aquifer, representing potential health risks particularly during the rainy season, in one of the most important areas used for tourism in Mexico.
Significance and Impact of the Study
This is one of the few studies conducted in karst aquifers that provide a foundational baseline of the distribution, concentrations and diversity of NoVs and HadVs in these particular environments.
Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a key role in the development of both proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) and diabetic macular oedema (DMO). In recent years, anti-VEGF agents ...have emerged as new approaches to the treatment of these devastating diabetic complications. Although Phase III studies in the diabetic population are needed, intravitreal anti-VEGF therapy is currently being used in clinical practice. Intravitreal injection is an effective means of delivering anti-VEGF drugs to the retina. However, this is an invasive procedure associated with potentially serious complications, such as endophthalmitis or retinal detachment, which may be significant for patients requiring serial treatment over many years. In addition, although delivered within the vitreous, anti-VEGF drugs could pass into the systemic circulation, which could potentially result in hypertension, proteinuria, increased cardiovascular events and impaired wound healing. Pegaptanib, ranibizumab and bevacizumab are the currently available anti-VEGF agents. Ranibizumab and bevacizumab block all VEGF isoforms, thus impairing both physiological and pathological neovascularisation. Pegaptanib only blocks the VEGF₁₆₅ isoform, and would therefore seem the best option for avoiding systemic adverse effects in diabetic patients, although this remains to be demonstrated in clinical trials. In this regard, head-to-head studies designed to evaluate not only the efficacy, but also the systemic adverse effects of these drugs in a high-risk population such as diabetic patients are warranted.
The assumption that oxidative addition is the key step during the cross-coupling reaction of aryl halides has led to the development of a plethora of increasingly complex metal catalysts, thereby ...obviating in many cases the exact influence of the base, which is a simple, inexpensive, and necessary reagent for this paramount transformation. Here, a combined experimental and computational study shows that the oxidative addition is not the single kinetically relevant step in different cross-coupling reactions catalyzed by sub-nanometer Pt or Pd species, since the reactivity control is shifted toward subtle changes in the base. The exposed metal atoms in the cluster cooperate to enable an extremely easy oxidative addition of the aryl halide, even chlorides, and allow the base to bifurcate the coupling. With sub-nanometer Pd species, amines drive to the Heck reaction, carbonate drives to the Sonogahira reaction, and phosphate drives to the Suzuki reaction, while for Pt clusters and single atoms, good conversion is only achieved using acetate as a base. This base-controlled orthogonal reactivity with ligand-free catalysts opens new avenues in the design of cross-coupling reactions in organic synthesis.
General intelligence is a robust predictor of important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainment, successfully managing everyday life situations, good health and longevity. ...Some neuronal correlates of intelligence have been discovered, mainly indicating that larger cortices in widespread parieto-frontal brain networks and efficient neuronal information processing support higher intelligence. However, there is a lack of established associations between general intelligence and any basic structural brain parameters that have a clear functional meaning. Here, we provide evidence that lower brain-wide white matter tract integrity exerts a substantial negative effect on general intelligence through reduced information-processing speed. Structural brain magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired from 420 older adults in their early 70s. Using quantitative tractography, we measured fractional anisotropy and two white matter integrity biomarkers that are novel to the study of intelligence: longitudinal relaxation time (T1) and magnetisation transfer ratio. Substantial correlations among 12 major white matter tracts studied allowed the extraction of three general factors of biomarker-specific brain-wide white matter tract integrity. Each was independently associated with general intelligence, together explaining 10% of the variance, and their effect was completely mediated by information-processing speed. Unlike most previously established neurostructural correlates of intelligence, these findings suggest a functionally plausible model of intelligence, where structurally intact axonal fibres across the brain provide the neuroanatomical infrastructure for fast information processing within widespread brain networks, supporting general intelligence.
Cerebral blood flow (CBF) reductions in Alzheimer's disease patients and related mouse models have been recognized for decades, but the underlying mechanisms and resulting consequences for ...Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis remain poorly understood. In APP/PS1 and 5xFAD mice we found that an increased number of cortical capillaries had stalled blood flow as compared to in wild-type animals, largely due to neutrophils that had adhered in capillary segments and blocked blood flow. Administration of antibodies against the neutrophil marker Ly6G reduced the number of stalled capillaries, leading to both an immediate increase in CBF and rapidly improved performance in spatial and working memory tasks. This study identified a previously uncharacterized cellular mechanism that explains the majority of the CBF reduction seen in two mouse models of Alzheimer's disease and demonstrated that improving CBF rapidly enhanced short-term memory function. Restoring cerebral perfusion by preventing neutrophil adhesion may provide a strategy for improving cognition in Alzheimer's disease patients.
Natural CO2 vents are considered the gold standard of ocean acidification (OA) studies. In coastal areas these rare vents have only been investigated at the Mediterranean temperate rocky reefs and at ...Indo-Pacific coral reefs, although there should be more at other volcanic shores around the world. Substantial scientific efforts on investigating OA effects have been mostly performed by laboratory experiments. However, there is a debate on how acute this kind of approach truly represents the responses to OA scenarios, since it generally involves short-term, rapid perturbation and single variable and species experiments. Due to these limitations, world areas with natural CO2 vents are essential to understand long-term marine ecosystem responses to rising human derived atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Here, we presented a new vent found in the subtropical North East Atlantic reefs (28°N, La Palma Island) that shows moderate CO2 emission (900ppm), reducing pH values to an annual average of 7.86±0.16.
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•A new underwater CO2 vent has been discovered in the South East coast of La Palma Island.•Annual CO2 emission is around 900ppm reducing pH values to an annual average of 7.86±0.16.•The pH reduction found at the vent site is predicted for world oceans to occur over the next 70years.•Nutrients analysis performed at the vent site shows higher levels of Si-SO4 compared to other studied sites.
The ability of 4-thiouracil to strongly absorb UVA radiation and to populate a reactive triplet state in high yield has enabled its use as a versatile photocrosslinker for nearly 50 years. In this ...contribution, we present a detailed spectroscopic and photochemical investigation of the 2-thiouracil, 4-thiouracil, and 2,4-dithiouracil series in an effort to further advance this chemistry and to scrutinize the photoreactivity of 2,4-dithiouracil. Our results reveal that excitation of 2,4-dithiouracil leads to intersystem crossing to the triplet manifold in 220 ± 40 fs, which enables the population of the reactive triplet state with near unity yield (ΦT = 0.90 ± 0.15) and ultimately leads to a ca. 50% singlet oxygen generation (ΦΔ = 0.49 ± 0.02)-one of the highest singlet oxygen yields reported to date for a photoexcited thiobase. In addition, the long-lived triplet state of 2,4-dithiouracil reacts efficiently with the nucleic acid base adenine 5'-monophosphate through a direct, oxygen-independent photocycloaddition mechanism and at a rate that is at least 3-fold faster than that of 4-thiouracil under equal conditions. The new physico-chemical insights reported for these RNA-thiobase derivatives are compared to those of the DNA and RNA bases and the DNA-thiobase derivatives. Furthermore, the strong near-visible absorption and increased photoreactivity measured for 2,4-dithiouracil lays a solid foundation for developing RNA-targeted photocrosslinking and phototherapeutic agents that are more effective than those currently available.
High-resolution optical imaging is critical to understanding brain function. We demonstrate that three-photon microscopy at 1,300-nm excitation enables functional imaging of GCaMP6s-labeled neurons ...beyond the depth limit of two-photon microscopy. We record spontaneous activity from up to 150 neurons in the hippocampal stratum pyramidale at ∼1-mm depth within an intact mouse brain. Our method creates opportunities for noninvasive recording of neuronal activity with high spatial and temporal resolution deep within scattering brain tissues.
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