Dalrymplebishop2688
In this work, we reported an in situ exopolysaccharide (in situ-EPS1) containing rare fucose produced by Lactobacillus helveticus MB2-1 in Sayram ketteki yoghurt, which made it unique. Its fine structure was characterized by GPC, HPLC, FT-IR, GC-MS,1HNMR and 13CNMR together with two-dimensional (2D) NMR spectra. The results revealed that in situ-EPS1 was a new heteropolysaccharide with molecular weight of 1.06 × 105 Da, and was composed of mannose, rhamnose, glucose, galactose and fucose with the following repeating units. Furthermore, the in situ-EPS1 exhibited significant antibiofilm effect against Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Notably, the in situ-EPS1 did not interfere with the planktonic growth of MRSA strain, whereas inhibited its cell metabolic activity and the transcription of genes related to biofilm formation. This unique antibiofilm but non-antibacterial mechanism supposedly prevented the development of bacterial drug resistance, which may open a new door to fight against these drug-resistant microorganisms.Present study aims at developing antimicrobial cotton gauze by dip coating of sodium alginate (SA), glycerol (Gly) and tannic acid (TA) blend. SA blends were prepared with varying concentration of glycerol in the range of 10-40 %. Blended films were fabricated and characterized by Fourier transform-infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), tensile studies, and contact angle analysis. The mechanical behavior of films indicated significant decrease in the tensile strength and modulus with the increase in the glycerol content due to the plasticization effect. The hydrophilicity of the blend films increased with increase in the glycerol content. TA was added to the blend as an antimicrobial agent. These blends were coated on the cotton gauze by dip coating method and their characterizations were carried out by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which revealed a smooth coating of SAGlyTA blend on cotton gauze. Antimicrobial analysis of TA coated gauzes was carried out which showed >95 % viable colony reduction against E. coli and S. aureus. Cytocompatibility studies indicated excellent cell-compatible activity. These results implicated that such coated gauzes are promising candidate that hold the great potential to be utilized as infection-resistant material in the health care sector.Toll-Like Receptors (TLRs) are important pattern recognition receptors, playing critical roles in the early innate immune response to defensing against pathogen invasion. In this study, we found both soluble form TLR5 (pfTLR5S) and membrane form TLR5 (pfTLR5M) in yellow catfish Pelteobagrus fulvidraco. The open reading frames (ORFs) of pfTLR5M and pfTLR5S genes were 2655 bp and 1947 bp in length, encoding 884 and 648 amino acids, respectively. pfTLR5M was composed of thirteen LRR domains, one TIR domain and one transmembrane domain. However, pfTLR5S have only fifteen LRR domains, without any TIR domain and transmembrane domain. Both pfTLR5M and pfTLR5S genes had the highest expression in liver, especially for pfTLR5S, which showed a noticeable high expression in liver. We also compared the relative mRNA expression levels of pfTLR5M and pfTLR5S in digestive and immune-related tissues after challenge of three different bacteria. In addition, we also found that pfTLR5S can interact with pfTLR5M, and inhibit the expression of pfTLR5M protein, while induced the expression of downstream proinflammatory factors, such as TNFα and IL8. These results revealed that both pfTLR5M and pfTLR5S play important and different roles in defensing against the invasion of flagellated bacteria, and they may function by binding to each other.Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a chronic metabolic liver disease closely related to obesity, which has become a global health problem. However, current pharmacological therapies for NAFLD are limited by potential side effects, low effectiveness and poor aqueous solubility. Herein, we designed functionalized drug-albumin nanocomposites (BAM15@BSA NPs), which were prepared by self-assembly of the anti-obesity small-molecule drug (BAM15) and bovine serum albumin (BSA), for treatment of NAFLD. The proposed BAM15@BSA NPs not only improve aqueous solubility and half-life of BAM15 but also exhibit hepatic-targeted capacity and an increased therapeutic efficacy. In vitro experiments revealed that BAM15@BSA NPs possessed excellent biocompatibility, and improved resistance to adipogenesis and reduced lipid accumulation in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. In vivo, BAM15@BSA NPs showed liver targeting ability and powerful anti-obesity effects without altering body temperature or affecting food intake, and could effectively alleviate hepatic steatosis and improve therapeutic efficacy for NAFLD treatment. The above findings demonstrated that BAM15@BSA NPs potentially served as a safe and effective drug for NAFLD treatment.The traditional 2d culture has been proved inferior to reproduce the subtle interaction between cell-to-cell and cell-to-extracellular matrix (ECM) in tumor microenvironment (TME) and collagen in ECM contributes to various malignancies of tumors. Hence, the 3d model contained with collagen may overcome the shortcomings of 2d culture. In this study, the in vitro TME mimicking matrix was prepared by coupling porcine liver-derived collagen (COL) and the dialdehyde group of partially oxidized alginate (OA), namely OA-COL, and the 3d OA-COL droplets were polymerized by divalent calcium ions. In the 3d OA-COL droplets, cancer cells displayed vigorous proliferation, and the cells grew in clusters and formed a unique spindle like clone. Quantitative analysis proved that various gene transcription and protein expression were up-regulated for the cells in the 3d OA-COL droplets, including F-actin reassembling, focal adhesion, pseudopodia formation, and the proteins involved in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The 3d OA-COL droplets induced the cells with strengthened polarity, invasiveness, higher IC50, and manifested stronger tumorigenicity in vivo. The fabricated 3d OA-COL droplets reproduced a variety of TME parameters, constructed an in vitro model similar to the TME in vivo, and it may facilitate many investigations in cell biology and tumor biology.Light in the UVC spectral region damages both single-strand (ssDNA) and double-strand DNA (dsDNA), and contributes to the formation of mutagenic photoproducts. In-vivo studies show greater damage for ssDNA compared to dsDNA. However, excited-state spectroscopy shows that dsDNA has longer excited-state lifetime than ssDNA, which increases the probability of damage for dsDNA. However, lack of a direct comparison of in-vitro ssDNA and dsDNA damage rates precludes the development of a model that elucidates the molecular factors responsible for damage. In this work, two novel sensitive "release-on-demand" biosensors are developed for the selective probing of DNA-damage and comparing the rate of DNA damage in ssDNA and dsDNA. The two biosensors involve the use of EvaGreen and Hoechst dyes for the sensitive probing of DNA-damage. The results show that ssDNA is damaged at a faster rate than dsDNA in the presence of UVC light (200-295 nm). Furthermore, we examined the effect of G/C composition on the damage rate for mostly A/T ssDNA and dsDNA oligonucleotides. Our results show that DNA damage rates are highly dependent on the fraction of guanines in the sequence, but that in-vitro dsDNA always exhibits an overall slower rate of damage compared to ssDNA, essentially independent of sequence.Currently, it is still a huge challenge to prepare high performance eco-friendly poly(lactic acid) (PLA) with high thermal stability, good processability, excellent crystallization behavior, good transparency and highly-efficient fire safety. In this paper, a novel bio-based nucleation agent N-(furan-2-ylmethyl)-P,P-diphenylphosphinic amide (FPPA) was prepared and used for the fabrication of fire safety PLA/FPPA composites. The chemical structure of FPPA was measured by FTIR, NMR and MS. Further, the crystallization behavior, thermal stability, fire safety and mechanical properties of PLA/FPPA composites were performed by TGA, DSC, polarization microscope, LOI, UL94, cone calorimeter, DMA and, SEM, Raman, GC-MS, and TGA-FTIR. The results showed that the multifunctional FPPA not only had a high thermal stability and was a good nucleation agent for PLA. Moreover, only loading of 3 wt% FPPA increased the LOI of PLA from 19.0 to 33.8 % with UL-94 V-0 classification. Selleckchem Scutellarin Furthermore, the heat release rate and total heat release values of PLA/3%FPPA composite reduced by 6.3 % and 15.3 % in cone-calorimeter test. Such high fire safety was mainly attributed to specific fire safety radicals due to thermal degradation of FPPA to interrupt composites burning in gas phase. Besides, transparency and mechanical properties were almost not changed because of low loading of FPPA in PLA. This multifunctional bio-based fire-retardant for PLA with good comprehensive performance promises broad application in engineering electronics, automobiles, 3D printing and construction materials.Xylan could be considered as a good potential candidate for food packaging film because of the vast source and biodegradability, however, its application was restricted by the drawbacks of poor film-forming property, humidity sensitivity, weak mechanical strength and poor antibacterial property. In this paper, xylan was firstly modified by quaternization to improve the film-forming property, then ZnO nanoparticles encapsulated by xylan (nano ZnO@Xylan) was prepared by nanoprecipitation method, finally a series of biodegradable composite films were prepared using quaternized xylan and polyvinyl alcohol with incorporation of nano ZnO@Xylan. The surface morphology, molecular structure and crystallography structure of the films were characterized. The addition of nano ZnO@Xylan decreased water vapor permeability and solubility, meanwhile obviously increased the ultraviolet shielding performance as well as the antibacterial properties of the films. The bacteriostasis rate of the films against E. coli and S. aureus reached up to 99 %. Furthermore, the preservation time of cherry tomatoes covered with ZnO@Xylan/QX/PVA films was extended to at least 21 days. In conclusion, all the results ensure that the fabricated composite films have considerable promising application in the food packaging industry."High-pressure processing (HPP) plus" combined technologies are applied to overcome the limitation of single HPP and to produce juices with more stable quality during storage. This research explored the potential of HPP in combination with centrifugation to produce cloud stable orange juice during refrigerated storage. The results indicated that HPP combined processing technology significantly improved the cloud stability of orange juice, which was related to removed large particles, reduced viscosity, decreased protein contents, and inactivated pectin methylesterase activity induced by centrifugation (P less then 0.05). Besides, chelator solubilized pectin (CSP) decreased but water solubilized pectin (WSP) maintained in the juice after centrifugation. During storage, the conversion of pectin fraction from WSP to CSP, resulting in sedimentation appeared in centrifugation treated orange juice when stored for 28 days. In general, pectin characteristics changes and pectin fractions conversion were the main driving forces affecting cloud stability of orange juice pasteurized by HPP in combination with centrifugation and during chilled storage.