•Konjac oligo-glucomannan was prepared by degradation of konjac glucomannan.•The average degree of polymerization of the konjac oligo-glucomannan was 5.2.•FTIR spectra indicated that konjac ...glucomannan was successfully degraded.•KOG exhibited significant antioxidant activities but weaker than Vc.
Konjac oligo-glucomannan (KOG) was prepared by degradation of konjac glucomannan (KG) using β-mannanase. The hydrolysis process was monitored by the viscosity of the enzymatic hydrolysates. Factors affecting the enzymatic hydrolysis of KG were investigated, and the optimum hydrolysis conditions were as follows: time 2h; temperature 50°C; pH 6.0; and enzymatic concentration 150U/g. Under these optimized conditions, minimum viscosity (31.9mPa·s) of the hydrolasate was obtained. The average degree of polymerization (DP) of the resulting KOG was approximately equal to 5.2. The results of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra of KG and KOG indicated that KG was successfully degraded. In addition, their antioxidant activities were evaluated by determination of hydroxyl radical (•OH) and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhrazyl radical (•DPPH) scavenging activity, and determination of reducing power. The results showed that KOG exhibited significant antioxidant activities. Taken together, this study suggested that KOG could potentially be used as a natural antioxidant.
Paansri P, Siri S, Ponpithuk Y, Suksavate W, Safoowong M, Nuipakdee W, Duengkae P. 2019. Sexual dimorphism of Hill Blue Flycatcher (Cyornis banyumas) in Hill Evergreen Forest, Mae Sa-Kog Ma Biosphere ...Reserve, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. Biodiversitas 20: 1544-1548. A sample consisting of 60 males and 39 females Cyornis banyumas captured in the Mae Sa-Kog Ma Biosphere Reserve was examined using 42 morphometric characters to assess sexual dimorphism. The results of the univariate analysis showed that there were ten morphometric traits (Ltail, TLF, C-middle, HB, C-outer, T-inner, C-digit, T-middle, DUTET and LG) that could be used for discrimination of sexual differences. The morphological data based on significant differences revealed that males were larger than females. The results of discriminant analysis based on the significant differences of nine raw morphometric data can be used to construct a sexual discrimination equation (D) where D = -22.051 + 0.368 (Ltail). The sexual discrimination equation can be directly used to identify both sexes with 79.6% of cross-validated grouped cases correctly classified, since positive D scores indicated males and negative D scores indicated females, with 81.4% of the males and 74.4% of the females being correctly assigned with a cutoff value between sexes = 0.
Leaf senescence is the last period of leaf growth and a dynamic procedure associated with its death. The adaptability of the plants to changing environments occurs thanks to leaf senescence. Hence, ...transcriptional profiling is important to figure out the exact mechanisms of inducing leaf senescence in a particular crop, such as rice. From this perspective, leaf samples of two different rice genotypes, the
(
) mutant and its wild type (WT) were sampled for transcriptional profiling to identify differentially-expressed genes (DEGs). We identified 2670 DEGs, among which 1657 genes were up- and 1013 genes were down-regulated. These DEGs were enriched in binding and catalytic activity, followed by the single organism process and metabolic process through gene ontology (GO), while the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis showed that the DEGs were related to the plant hormone signal transduction and photosynthetic pathway enrichment. The expression pattern and the clustering of DEGs revealed that the
and
family, as well as zinc finger transcription factors, had greater effects on early-senescence of leaf compared to other transcription factors. These findings will help to elucidate the precise functional role of
rice mutant in the early-leaf senescence.
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•Retrieved, analyzed open access P. chrysosporium gene expression datasets.•Reported information storage processing gene expression patterns of P. chrysosporium.•RNA helicases, ...polyadenylate binding, splicing, SAGA, MYST, chromatin remodeling factors.•Amidases, eIF-4G and 2C, MPT5, UK114/IBMI, exoribonucleases, ribosomal proteins.•GATA, HMG, heat shock, HLH, CREB, HNF3, CCAAT, MLH, MSH6, RAD16, Tam3 were commonly expressed.
The outstanding degrading abilities of Phanerochaete chrysosporium is solely dependent on its lignocellulolytic, aromatic compound degrading and detoxifying enzymes. However, the gene expression and protein turnover of lignocellulolytic enzymes are controlled at cellular level by various genes involved in information storage and processing KOG group. Understanding the gene expression patterns and mechanisms involved in regulation of lignocellulose degrading enzymes will significantly help in strain improvement and developing recombinant strains. To study the common expression patterns, we have retrieved P. chrysosporium gene expression datasets from NCBI GEO and analyzed using GeneSpring® software based on the genome wide KOG annotations retrieved from JGI-MycoCosm database. Statistically significant genes obtained from our analysis were separated into replication, repair and recombination, chromatin structure and dynamics, transcription factors, RNA processing and modification and translation, ribosomal structure and biogenesis processes. We have observed various genes encoding for DNA damage, repair and recombination, mRNA splicing, amidases, polyadenylate binding factors, heat shock, helix loop helix, HMG-box, CCAAT (HAP5), CRE-B transcription factors, histone acetyl transferases (MYST, SAGA) commonly expressed among the datasets of natural plant biomass growth substrates. Further studies must be conducted to understand the role and involvement of these significant genes in plant biomass degradation by P. chrysosporium.
Freshwater molluscs have found strategic applications in public and veterinary health. Additionally, they have been used as bioindicator organisms towards environmental biomonitoring of polluted ...waters. The freshwater pulmonate, Physa acuta has been extensively studied as a potential biomarker in aquatic habitats with heavy metal, chemical, and microbial stressors. Lack of genomic resources is the bottleneck towards the study of candidate genes responsible for the unique adaptation of the mollusc to contaminated aquatic habitats. We have reported an EST survey of functionally relevant stress and defense related genes from P. acuta in our earlier study. In continuation of the same, we generated 1108 high-quality ESTs from a normalized cDNA library, pooled from the RNA isolated from the whole body tissue of CdCl2 exposed specimens of P. acuta. After clustering and assembly, we finally obtained 730 unique sequences representing 114 contigs and 616 singletons. Annotation of EST sequences revealed that 65.2, 62.8, and 35.9 % show significant homology to NCBI non-redundant database, Molluscs amino acid database, and NCBI KOG database, respectively. The functional characterization of the ESTs in Cd treated P. acuta group showed a greater proportion of signal transduction, cytoskeleton, and extracellular structure relevant genes compared with the control group. A large proportion of transcripts of cadmium treated P. acuta fell under the poorly characterized group of genes. These EST resources provide valuable information on Cd-specific transcript expression of P. acuta and could be utilized by scientists for developing new biomonitoring markers.
The tarantula
Chilobrachys jingzhao is one of the most venomous spiders with a specialized organ, venom gland, which synthesizes and secretes the complex and abundant toxin proteins. The components ...of the venom have been extensively studied. As far as the molecular mechanism of toxin secretion and metabolism is concerned, we still knew a little. To obtain a comprehensive view of function of its venom gland we constructed a non-normalized cDNA library of the venom gland and generated 788 expressed sequence tags (ESTs). All ESTs were assembled into 356 non-redundancy sequences including 85 clusters and 271 singlets, of which 31.4% of total unique sequences belong to secretion protein coding sequences including cystine knot toxins (29.1%) and other secretion proteins (2.3%); 54.0% are similar to common cellular transcripts; and 14.6% have no significant similarity to any known sequences. Annotation of these ESTs revealed some novel possible venom components and cellular processes important for venom gland functions, including protein posttranslation processing, cell motility, protein synthesis, energy supply, etc. This study contains a transcriptome analysis of spider venom gland focusing on its cellular structural and functional aspects, and confirms the very specialized nature of the spider venom gland as toxin producer.
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•The attenuated virulence of Acanthamoeba was recovered by serial Mouse-Brain Passage.•Microarray analysis of MBP strain showed 601 genes were up-regulated.•KOG analysis of ...up-regulated genes showed a high population in T and O articles.•MBP up-regulated genes provide important information regarding the virulence factors.•This research will lead to better treatment strategies for human Acanthamoeba infection.
Long-term cultivation in a laboratory could reduce the virulence of Acanthamoeba. To identify virulence factors of Acanthamoeba, the authors compared the transcription profiles of long-term cultivated Acanthamoeba healyi (OLD) and three times mouse-brain passaged A. healyi (MBP) using microarray analysis and eukaryotic orthologous group (KOG) assignments. Microarray analysis revealed that 601 genes were up-regulated by mouse-brain passage. The results of real-time PCR of 8 randomly selected genes up-regulated in the MBP strain confirmed microarray analysis findings. KOG assignments showed relatively higher percentages of the MBP strain up-regulated genes in T article (signal transduction mechanism), O article (posttranslational modification, protein turnover, chaperones), C article (energy production and conversion), and J article (translation, ribosomal structure and biogenesis). In particular, the MBP strain showed higher expressions of cysteine protease and metalloprotease. A comparison of KOG assignments by microarray analysis and previous EST (expressed sequence tags) analysis showed similar populations of up-regulated genes. These results provide important information regarding the identification of virulence factors of pathogenic Acanthamoeba.
Six eukaryotic supergroups have been proposed based on both morphological and molecular data. However, some of these supergroups are contentious and the deep relationships among them are poorly ...resolved. This is due to a limited number of morphological characters and few molecular markers in current use. The lack of resolution in most multigene analyses, including phylogenomic analyses, necessitates a search for additional, appropriate molecular markers to enable targeted sampling of taxa in key phylogenetic positions. We evaluated the phylogenetic signal of 860 proteins obtained from the Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COGs) database. We report a total of 17 markers that resulted in well-resolved topologies that are congruent with well-established components of the eukaryotic tree. To establish their utility, we designed universal degenerate primers for six markers, some of which showed promising results in unicellular eukaryotes. Finally, we present phylogenetic informativeness profiles for seven selected markers, revealing that the markers contain phylogenetic signal that spans the whole tree including the deeper branches.
The water budget and discharge processes in a seasonal tropical watershed were analyzed. The watershed has very stable base stream flows even in the late dry season and very quick direct runoff ...during rains. A tentative runoff error correction method applying an existing lumped runoff model was proposed in this paper and showed good agreement with the correct runoff error. After correcting runoff data, the annual average rainfall and runoff during the 11 years of 1998–2008 were calculated respectively as 1870.4 mm and 1229.2 mm. The average annual water loss was 641.2 mm. Distribution measurements of topsoil depth taken using a knocking cone penetration meter showed that this watershed has a deep topsoil layer (5.3 m average). Groundwater tables are apparent only in the lower area of the watershed. A saturated swamp area is a permanent feature near the weir. Results suggest that the stable base flow in this watershed was generated by return flow of soil-water infiltration into the thick topsoil and fractured bedrock.
The trophozoite of Acanthamoeba transforms into a cyst, the resistant form under harmful environments such as starvation, cold and certain chemicals used in medical treatment. To investigate the ...factors mediating encystation, ESTs of encystation-induced A. castellanii were analysed and compared to those of trophozoites. Each EST was compared by the predicted proteins from the ESTs, to the cyst and the trophozoite by reciprocal BLAST analysis, KOG assignment, and gene annotation. In addition to the genes previously reported to encystation mediate such as cyst specific protein 21, protein kinase C, proteasome and heat shock protein, several genes like cullin 4, autophage protein 8 and ubiquitin-conjugating enzymes were identified to be related to encystation. Five kinds of proteinase genes were detected in cyst ESTs. The information of the genes expressed during encystation may open the way to further study on differentiation and resistance of cyst-forming pathogenic protozoa.
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