Effects of ball milling treated wheat flour and maltodextrin on the texture and oil absorption properties of fried batter-coated cashews and almonds.

In this study, the effects of wheat flour treated with ball milling (BM) and maltodextrin on the oil absorption and textural characteristics of fried batter-coated cashews and almonds (BCAs) were investigated. The result showed that the crystallinity of the starch granules in wheat flour decreased after the BM treatment. Furthermore, the ΔH of the batter decreased as the BM time was elongated, but the addition of maltodextrin had no significant impact on ΔH. Both BM-treated wheat flour and maltodextrin increased the fracturability and decreased the oil content of the fried BCAs' batter. The addition of BM-treated wheat flour and maltodextrin decreased the oil content of the batter from 28.93% to 18.75% for batter-coated cashews and from 30.92% to 18.61% for batter-coated almonds. Overall, the addition of BM-treated wheat flour and maltodextrin in batter is an effective approach to decrease oil content and improve the textural quality of fried BCAs.

Effect of pre-drying and post-frying holding treatments on the oil absorption and quality of fried batter-coated peanuts.

In this study, the effect of pre-drying and post-frying holding treatments on the oil absorption and the quality of the fried batter-coated peanuts were explored. The results showed that hot air drying and microwave drying induced the gelatinization of starch in the batter before frying. The thermodynamic properties of starch in the batter after frying indicated that pre-drying could protect the orderliness of the starch. CLSM images showed that the pre-drying treatment reduced the number of large oil spots on the surface of batter of fried batter-coated peanuts. SEM observation revealed that the structure of the batter treated with pre-drying was denser and the number of large pores was reduced after frying. The post-frying holding treatment improved the color and texture of the batter-coated peanuts. In conclusion, the pre-drying and post-frying holding treatment can reduce the oil content and improve the fracturability of the fried batter-coated peanuts.

The addition of resistant starch and protein to the batter reduces oil uptake and improves the quality of the fried batter-coated nuts.

The batter compositions can affect the oil uptake and texture of fried batter-coated nuts. In this study, the oil uptake and quality of fried batter-coated peanuts and sunflower seeds added with resistant starch and protein were investigated. The results demonstrated that the addition of resistant starch increased the batter hardness and fracturability of the fried batter-coated peanuts by 34.36 % and 33.73 %, respectively. The oil content of fried batter-coated peanuts and sunflower seeds were decreased by 17.98 % and 15.69 %, respectively, with the addition of protein. The microstructure and roughness of the batter revealed that the batter added with protein became denser and uniform. Furthermore, the protein in the batter added with 6 % soy protein isolate had a high surface hydrophobicity. In summary, the addition of resistant starch and protein in batter will be a promising strategy for reducing the oil content and improving the quality of fried batter-coated nuts.

Association between serum γ-glutamyltransferase and chronic kidney disease in urban Han Chinese: a prospective cohort study.

PURPOSE: Limited numbers of literatures have focused on the association between γ-glutamyltransferase (GGT) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), and their results were controversial. Therefore, in this study, we set up a large-scale cohort of Chinese population to discover and verify the association between serum GGT and CKD. METHODS: Our cohort study was based on 21,818 patients who visited Health Management Center of Shandong Provincial Hospital, China, to receive routine health check-up during the period of 2005-2010, and we used multivariate Cox regression model to clarify whether elevated serum GGT increased the risk of CKD or not. RESULTS: During the follow-up of 57,891 person-years, 1456 patients developed CKD, giving rise to an incidence density of 25.15 per 1000 person-years (1456/57,891 person-years). After adjusting gender, age, baseline serum creatinine (SCr), body mass index (BMI), serum albumin (ALB), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), hemoglobin, white blood cell count (WBC), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), hypertension, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, smoking and drinking status, the risk for CKD increased with the elevated serum GGT quartiles. The hazard ratio (HR) for CKD was 1.326 (95 % confidence interval (CI), 1.073-1.639) when the top quartile of serum GGT was compared with the bottom one, and the HR of log-transformed serum GGT for CKD was 1.658 (95 % CI, 1.294-2.125). The results were consistent in males but different in females when gender was stratified. CONCLUSION: The result reveals that there is a positive relationship between increasing serum GGT levels and the incidence of CKD which suggests that elevated GGT level could be a potential indicator for risk of CKD.

Expression profiles of miRNAs in Gossypium raimondii.

miRNAs are a class of conserved, small, endogenous, and non-protein-coding RNA molecules with 20-24 nucleotides (nt) in length that function as post-transcriptional modulators of gene expression in eukaryotic cells. Functional studies have demonstrated that plant miRNAs are involved in the regulation of a wide range of plant developmental processes. To date, however, no research has been carried out to study the expression profiles of miRNAs in Gossypium raimondii, a model cotton species. We selected 16 miRNAs to profile their tissue-specific expression patterns in G. raimondii four different tissues, and these miRNAs are reported to play important roles in plant growth and development. Our results showed that the expression levels of these miRNAs varied significantly from one to another in a tissue-dependent manner. Eight miRNAs, including miR-159, miR-162, miR-164, miR-172, miR-390, miR-395, miR-397, and miR-398, exhibited exclusively high expression levels in flower buds, suggesting that these miRNAs may play significant roles in floral development. The expression level of miR-164 was relatively high in shoots beside flower buds, implying that the function of miR-164 is not only limited to floral development but it may also play an important role in shoot development. Certain miRNAs such as miR-166 and miR-160 were extremely highly expressed in all of the four tissues tested compared with other miRNAs investigated, suggesting that they may play regulatory roles at multiple development stages. This study will contribute to future studies on the functional characterization of miRNAs in cotton.

[QTL mapping for "pre-summer boll, summer boll and autumn boll" traits in cotton].

"Pre-summer boll, summer boll and autumn boll" have long been regarded as an important index for prematurity and high-yield in cotton. In this study, the prematurity and high-yield cotton cultivar, Baimian 2, was used as the central parent to cross separately with the middle-late-matury lines TM-1 and CIR12, and then two populations of F2 and F2:3 family lines were obtained, which was used to construct two genetic linkage maps. These maps were comprised of 269 and 127 marker loci with the total length 1837.8 cM and 1244.3 cM, respectively. Results of QTL location showed that a total of 29 QTLs were detected in the two combinations, including 16 suggestive QTLs and 13 significant QTLs, of which 5 significant QTLs had higher LOD values that was not only greater than 3 but also greater than the threshold calculated by permutation test. The contribution rate of 16 QTLs explained 10.9%-44.5% of the phenotypic variations. Four common QTLs, qPSB-17 for pre-summer boll, qSB-17 (qSB-17a/17b) for summer boll, and qAB-17 and qAB-12/26 for autumn boll, were detected close to common markers of the same chromosome in the two combinations, which could be applied in marker-assisted selection. Moreover, the contribution rate of qSB-17 (qSB-17a/17b) for summer boll in the two combinations was greater than 10%, and that of qAB-17, qAB-12/26 for autumn boll in one combination were greater than 10%. These common QTLs with greater contribution rates should take into consideration firstly in marker-assisted selection.

Functional characterization of an apple apomixis-related MhFIE gene in reproduction development.

The products of the FIS genes play important regulatory roles in diverse developmental processes, especially in seed formation after fertilization. In this study, a FIS-class gene MhFIE was isolated from apple. It encoded a predicted protein highly similar to polycomb group (PcG) protein FERTILIZATION-INDEPENDENT ENDOSPERM (FIE). MhFIE functioned as an Arabidopsis FIE homologue, as indicated by functional complementation experiment using Arabidopsis fie mutant. In addition, BiFC assay showed that MhFIE protein interacted with AtCLF. Furthermore, transgenic Arabidopsis ectopically expressing MhFIE produced less APETALA3 (AtAP3) and AGAMOUS (AtAG) transcripts than WT control, and therefore exhibited abnormal flower, seed development. These results suggested that polycomb complex including FIE and CLF proteins played an important role in reproductive development by regulating the expression of its downstream genes. In addition, it was found that MhFIE constitutively expressed in various tissues tested. Its expression levels were lower in apomictic apple species than the sexual reproductive species, suggested it was possibly involved into apomixis in apple. Furthermore, the hybrids of tea crabapple generated MhFIE transcripts at different levels. The parthenogenesis capacity was negatively correlated with MhFIE expression level in these hybrids. These results suggested that MhFIE was involved into the regulation of flower development and apomixis in apple.

The functions of microRNAs in plants.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small regulatory RNAs, which repress gene expression at the posttranscriptional levels through binding to target mRNAs for directly cleaving mRNAs or inhibiting protein translation. Mature miRNAs are produced from miRNA genes by multiple biological processes, in which several important enzymes are involved in. To date, several hundreds of miRNAs have been identified in plants using a various computational and/or experimental approaches. These miRNAs regulate plant tissue differentiation, development and growth, control auxin signal transduction, involve in plant response to a variety of abiotic and biotic environmental stresses.

Measuring gene flow in the cultivation of transgenic cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.).

Transgenic Bt cotton NewCott 33B and transgenic tfd A cotton TFD were chosen to evaluate pollen dispersal frequency and distance of transgenic cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) in the Huanghe Valley Cotton-producing Zone, China. The objective was to evaluate the efficacy of biosafety procedures used to reduce pollen movement. A field test plot of transgenic cotton (6 x 6 m) was planted in the middle of a nontransgenic field measuring 210 x 210 m. The results indicated that the pollen of Bt cotton or tfd A cotton could be dispersed into the environment. Out-crossing was highest within the central test plot where progeny from nontransgenic plants, immediately adjacent to transgenic plants, had resistant plant progeny at frequencies up to 10.48%. Dispersal frequency decreased significantly and exponentially as dispersal distance increased. The flow frequency and distance of tfd A and Bt genes were similar, but the pollen-mediated gene flow of tfd A cotton was higher and further to the transgenic block than that of Bt cotton (chi2 = 11.712, 1 degree of freedom, p < 0.001). For the tfd A gene, out-crossing ranged from 10.13% at 1 m to 0.04% at 50 m from the transgenic plants. For the Bt gene, out-crossing ranged from 8.16% at 1 m to 0.08% at 20 m from the transgenic plants. These data were fit to a power curve model: y = 10.1321x-1.4133 with a correlation coefficient of 0.999, and y = 8.0031x-1.483 with a correlation coefficient of 0.998, respectively. In this experiment, the farthest distance of pollen dispersal from transgenic cotton was 50 m. These results indicate that a 60-m buffer zone would serve to limit dispersal of transgenic pollen from small-scale field tests.

Identification and characterization of new plant microRNAs using EST analysis.

Seventy-five previously known plant microRNAs (miRNAs) were classified into 14 families according to their gene sequence identity. A total of 18,694 plant expressed sequence tags (EST) were found in the GenBank EST databases by comparing all previously known Arabidopsis miRNAs to Genbank plant EST databases with BLAST algorithms. After removing the EST sequences with high numbers (more than 2) of mismatched nucleotides, a total of 812 EST contigs were identified. After predicting and scoring the RNA secondary structure of the 812 EST sequences using mFold software, 338 new potential miRNAs were identified in 60 plant species. miRNAs are widespread. Some microRNAs may highly conserve in the plant kingdom, and they may have the same ancestor in very early evolution. There is no nucleotide substitution in most miRNAs among many plant species. Some of the new identified potential miRNAs may be induced and regulated by environmental biotic and abiotic stresses. Some may be preferentially expressed in specific tissues, and are regulated by developmental switching. These findings suggest that EST analysis is a good alternative strategy for identifying new miRNA candidates, their targets, and other genes. A large number of miRNAs exist in different plant species and play important roles in plant developmental switching and plant responses to environmental abiotic and biotic stresses as well as signal transduction. Environmental stresses and developmental switching may be the signals for synthesis and regulation of miRNAs in plants. A model for miRNA induction and expression, and gene regulation by miRNA is hypothesized.