ABSTRACT
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the most important food crop for at least half of the world's population. Due to improved living standards, the cultivation of high‐quality rice for different ...purposes and markets has become a major goal. Rice quality is determined by the presence of many nutritional components, including seed storage proteins (SSPs), which are the second most abundant nutrient components of rice grains after starch. Rice SSP biosynthesis requires the participation of multiple organelles and is influenced by the external environment, making it challenging to understand the molecular details of SSP biosynthesis and improve rice protein quality. In this review, we highlight the current knowledge of rice SSP biosynthesis, including a detailed description of the key molecules involved in rice SSP biosynthetic processes and the major environmental factors affecting SSP biosynthesis. The effects of these factors on SSP accumulation and their contribution to rice quality are also discussed based on recent findings. This recent knowledge suggests not only new research directions for exploring rice SSP biosynthesis but also innovative strategies for breeding high‐quality rice varieties.
This review provides updated information on the biosynthetic pathway of storage proteins in rice seeds, including transcriptional, posttranscriptional, and posttranslational regulatory events, and summarizes the influence of high temperature and nitrogen fertilizer on the accumulation of storage protein. Some innovative strategies for breeding high‐quality rice are also discussed.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) has become a major contributing disease to human death and thought to be closely related to the aging process. The rich antioxidant substances in plants have been shown to ...play a role in delaying aging and in recent years significant research has been focused on also examining their potential role in AD onset and progression. Many plant-derived antioxidants research studies have provided insights for the future treatment and prevention of AD. This article reviews various types of plant-derived antioxidants with anti-aging effects on neurons. This article distinguishes the different types of active substances that exhibit different degrees of protection for the nervous system and summarizes the mechanisms thereof. Plant-derived antioxidants with neuroprotective functions can protect various components of the nervous system in a variety of ways and can have a positive impact on interventions to prevent and alleviate AD. Furthermore, when considering neuroprotective agents, glial cells also contribute to the defence of the nervous system and should not be ignored.
Octacosanol has multiple biological functions. In this study, the anti-inflammatory effect and molecular mechanism of octacosanol were evaluated by using dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced ...ulcerative colitis model in mice and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated mouse macrophage RAW264.7 cells. The colitis mouse model was induced by 3.0% DSS in 8-week ICR mice and octacosanol orally administered with 100 mg/kg/day. The results showed that octacosanol significantly improved the health status of mice and reduced DSS-induced pathological damage in the colonic tissues. Octacosanol obviously inhibited the mRNA and protein expression levels of pro-inflammatory factors of colonic tissues. In vitro, octacosanol administration significantly reduced the expression of mRNA or protein of pro-inflammatory cytokines and the phosphorylation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase and p38, and it also partly prevented LPS-induced translocations of NF-κB and AP-1. Octacosanol has anti-inflammatory effect, and its molecular mechanism may be involved in downregulating the expression of inflammatory factors and blocking of MAPK/NF-κB/AP-1 signaling pathway.
Monascus is a filamentous fungus that is widely used for producing Monascus pigments in the food industry in Southeast Asia. While the development of bioinformatics has helped elucidate the molecular ...mechanism underlying metabolic engineering of secondary metabolite biosynthesis, the biological information on the metabolic engineering of the morphology of Monascus remains unclear. In this study, the whole genome of M. purpureus CSU-M183 strain was sequenced using combined single-molecule real-time DNA sequencing and next-generation sequencing platforms. The length of the genome assembly was 23.75 Mb in size with a GC content of 49.13%, 69 genomic contigs and encoded 7305 putative predicted genes. In addition, we identified the secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters and the chitin synthesis pathway in the genome of the high pigment-producing M. purpureus CSU-M183 strain. Furthermore, it is shown that the expression levels of most Monascus pigment and citrinin clusters located genes were significantly enhanced via atmospheric room temperature plasma mutagenesis. The results provide a basis for understanding the secondary metabolite biosynthesis, and constructing the metabolic engineering of the morphology of Monascus.
In Western countries and China, the dietary habit of high calories usually results in hyperlipidemia, which is closely associated with cardiovascular diseases. In the study, we investigated the ...antihyperlipidemic effect of oryzanol and its molecular mechanism in the high fat diet (HFD) mouse model. In total, 60 ICR mice were randomly divided into control group, HFD group, and HFD+Ory group. The mice from the HFD+Ory group were additionally fed with 100 mg/kg of oryzanol by intragastric administration. Our data indicated that oryzanol treatment for 10 weeks significantly reduced bodyweight, liver weight, and adipose tissues weight of the mice; lowered the contents of total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C); and elevated high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C) in the plasma of HFD mice. Compared with the HFD group, H&E staining showed that oryzanol treatment decreased the size of fat droplets of liver tissues and the size of adipocytes. Gene chip data found that oryzanol administration caused 32 genes to increase expressions while 60 genes had reduced expressions in the liver tissues of HFD mice. IPA software was used to analyze the protein interaction network and found that transcript factor NF-κB located in the central role of network, meaning NF-κB may have important function in the lipid-lowering effect of oryzanol. Western blotting and RT-qPCR confirmed that lipid metabolism-related gene expressions were obviously regulated by oryzanol administration. Oryzanol also inhibited expressions of inflammatory factor in the liver tissues of HDF mice. Taken together, our data indicate that oryzanol treatment can regulate lipid metabolism-related gene expressions and inhibit HDF-caused obesity in mice.
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•Policosanol extraction methods and principles were summarized.•Policosanol may lower the risk of health disorders.•Policosanol regulated pathways and the key target ...genes.•Policosanol is source to develop ancillary drugs and functional foods.
Policosanol is widely distributed naturally and can be isolated and purified from rice bran, sugarcane, apples, grapes etc. Due to its functional significance and ease of bioavailability, techniques for the extraction of policosanol are of great significance to investigators, of which saponification, solvent extraction, transesterification, molecular distillation, supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, ultrasonic-assisted extraction and other extraction methods are evaluated. Policosanol has been usually applied in functional foods because it has multiple health-improving properties, including the lowering of lipids, anti-aging, tissue regeneration, cyto-, liver, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular protection, and protection against diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, Parkinson’s disease, inflammation, ulcers and cancer. Additionally, the signaling pathways AMPK, MAPK and PI3K/Akt involved in its effects are investigated. This review compiled the most interesting references for scientifics engaged in policosanol health-improving effects, including extraction procedures. To sum up, it will help to develop ancillary drugs and functional foods in the future.
A variety of diseases associated with human aging, which have a strong oxidative stress, but connecting age-related diseases and oxidative stress of the basic molecular mechanisms still ...insufficiently understood. Oxidative stress origins from the unregulated production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and oxidative damaging to tissues and organs from subsequent oxidation-reduction chemistry by cellular mismanagement. In particular, H2O2 is a major by-product of ROS in live organisms and a common marker for oxidative stress, and its dynamic equilibrium can have various physiological and pathological consequences. H2O2 is a small molecule, but it is an essential oxygen metabolite in living systems and acts as an important compound in cellular signal transduction by reversible oxidation of proteins. To quantitatively detect of H2O2 in biosystems, herein, we adopted a 2-(2′-hydroxyphenyl)-4(3H)-quinazolinone (HPQ), a small organic fluorophore known for its luminescence mechanism through excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT). HPQ was employed as a precursor to develop a turn-on probe (HPQ-H) for bioimaging applications. After cleavaging the boronic ester moiety by H2O2, HPQ-H releases a HPQ fluorophore which shows a 45-fold fluorescence intensity enhancement with high sensitivity and selectivity over other reactive oxygen species (ROS), and a high resolution imaging and large tissue-imaging depth (70–170μm) in living cells and tissues images under two-photon excitation (720nm).
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•A new two-photon fluorescent probe was developed for detection of endogenous and exogenous H2O2.•The probe displayed 45-fold enhancement in fluorescence intensity for H2O2.•The probe showed deep-tissue imaging depth of 170μm.
Background
With the increasing development of biotechnology and informatics technology, publicly available data in chemistry and biology are undergoing explosive growth. Such wealthy information in ...these data needs to be extracted and transformed to useful knowledge by various data mining methods. Considering the amazing rate at which data are accumulated in chemistry and biology fields, new tools that process and interpret large and complex interaction data are increasingly important. So far, there are no suitable toolkits that can effectively link the chemical and biological space in view of molecular representation. To further explore these complex data, an integrated toolkit for various molecular representation is urgently needed which could be easily integrated with data mining algorithms to start a full data analysis pipeline.
Results
Herein, the python library
PyBioMed
is presented, which comprises functionalities for online download for various molecular objects by providing different IDs, the pretreatment of molecular structures, the computation of various molecular descriptors for chemicals, proteins, DNAs and their interactions.
PyBioMed
is a feature-rich and highly customized python library used for the characterization of various complex chemical and biological molecules and interaction samples. The current version of
PyBioMed
could calculate 775 chemical descriptors and 19 kinds of chemical fingerprints, 9920 protein descriptors based on protein sequences, more than 6000 DNA descriptors from nucleotide sequences, and interaction descriptors from pairwise samples using three different combining strategies. Several examples and five real-life applications were provided to clearly guide the users how to use
PyBioMed
as an integral part of data analysis projects. By using
PyBioMed
, users are able to start a full pipelining from getting molecular data, pretreating molecules, molecular representation to constructing machine learning models conveniently.
Conclusion
PyBioMed
provides various user-friendly and highly customized APIs to calculate various features of biological molecules and complex interaction samples conveniently, which aims at building integrated analysis pipelines from data acquisition, data checking, and descriptor calculation to modeling.
PyBioMed
is freely available at
http://projects.scbdd.com/pybiomed.html
.
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•Dual-emissive CDs have been fabricated by a solvothermal method.•White pepper was used as economical and green raw material.•The green emission at 520 nm was for ratiometric coenzyme ...A sensing by “off-on” strategy.•The sensor ensured rapid, selective and label-free detection in real samples.•The sensor had durable fluorescence, low cytotoxicity, and good biocompatibility for cellular imaging.
A new-style white pepper derived dual-emission carbon dots (CDs) with a quantum yield of 10.4% was designed and facile constructed with one-pot solvothermal method. The green emission (520 nm) had an efficient and special “turn-on” fluorescence sensing of coenzyme A (CoA) with the aid of Cu2+, while red emission (668 nm) barely changed and worked as reference. In the concentration range (0–150 µM), relative fluorescence intensity ratios (F520/F668) showed excellent linear correlation with concentrations of CoA, and detection limit was as low as 8.75 nm. Moreover, the strategy has been successfully applied for label-free detection of CoA in real pig liver samples with good recoveries (93.3–108.0%). Notably, the synthesized CDs had durable fluorescence, low cytotoxicity, and good biocompatibility for cellular imaging, which demonstrated wide and promising applicability for biosensing and bioimaging in the future.
Hyperlipidemia occurs very often in modern society along with a high calorie intake and is regarded as one of the greatest risk factors for the prevalence of cardiac vascular disease (CVD). In this ...study, we investigated the anti-hyperlipidemic effect of the rice bran polysaccharides (RBP) and its mechanism in a high fat diet animal model. 60 ICR mice were randomly divided into 3 groups, which included Control, HFD (high fat diet) and HFD + RBP, and each group included 20 mice. The control group was fed with a standard diet while the other two groups were fed with HFD. In addition, the HFD + RBP group was fed with 500 mg kg
of rice bran polysaccharides by intragastric administration while the other two groups were intragastrically administered with water. The results showed that RBP treatment for 10 weeks obviously decreased the body weight, liver weight and adipose tissues of mice; and it decreased the levels of total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG) and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-c) in the plasma. H&E staining of the liver tissues showed that RBP treatment decreased the size of fat droplets compared with the HFD group. Microarray analysis revealed that RBP treatment results in 80 genes being up-regulated while 72 genes were down-regulated in the tissues of liver. IPA software analysis suggested that NF-κB may play a vital role in the lipid-lowering effect of RBP. Real-time quantitative PCR confirmed that the mRNA levels of PPAR-α, PPAR-γ, PPAR-δ, SREBP-1C, FASN, ACC, SIRT and CD36, which are related to lipid metabolism, were significantly regulated by RBP supplementation compared to HFD. The western blot analysis further confirmed these altered expressions after RBP treatment. Taken together, these results suggest that the oral administration of RBP exerts lipid-lowering in high fat diet mice via regulating the lipid metabolism-related gene expression.
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