Role of TFEB-autophagy lysosomal pathway in palmitic acid induced renal tubular epithelial cell injury.

Lysosomal dysfunction and impaired autophagic flux are involved in the pathogenesis of lipotoxicity in the kidney. Here, we investigated the role of transcription factor EB (TFEB), a master regulator of autophagy-lysosomal pathway, in palmitic acid induced renal tubular epithelial cells injury. We examined lipid accumulation, autophagic flux, expression of Ps211-TFEB, and nuclear translocation of TFEB in HK-2 cells overloaded with palmitic acid (PA). By utilizing immunohistochemistry, we detected TFEB expression in renal biopsy tissues from patients with diabetic nephropathy and normal renal tissue adjacent to surgically removed renal carcinoma (controls), as well as kidney tissues from rat fed with high-fat diet (HFD) and low-fat diet (LFD). We found significant lipid accumulation, increased apoptosis, accompanied with elevated Ps211-TFEB, decreased nuclear TFEB, reduced lysosome biogenesis and insufficient autophagy in HK-2 cells treated with PA. Kidney tissues from patients with diabetic nephropathy had lower nuclear and total levels of TFEB than that in control kidney tissues. Level of renal nuclear TFEB in HFD rats was also lower than that in LFD rats. Exogenous overexpression of TFEB increased the nuclear TFEB level in HK-2 cells treated with PA, promoted lysosomal biogenesis, improved autophagic flux, reduced lipid accumulation and apoptosis. Our results collectively indicate that PA is a strong inducer for TFEB phosphorylation modification at ser211 accompanied with lower nuclear translocation of TFEB. Impairment of TFEB-mediated lysosomal biogenesis and function by palmitic acid may lead to insufficient autophagy and promote HK-2 cells injury.

[Qualitative and quantitative detection of beet syrup adulteration of honey by near-infrared spectroscopy: a feasibility study].

In order to further investigate the utility of near-infrared spectroscopys (NIRS) in rapidly detecting honey adulteration, near-infrared spectroscopy in combination with chemometric methods was investigated for qualitative and quantitative detection of beet syrup adulteration of honey. Total prediction accuracy of testing set was 90.2% by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) for authentic and adulterated honey samples. Total prediction accuracy of testing sets was all below 33.3% by different discriminant methods for classes of adulteration level. The quantitative analysis of adulteration level by PLS regression gave satisfying results if adulterated honey samples were got from the same one authentic honey sample: correlation coefficient (r)of actual values versus predicted values was 0.9829 and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) was 1.394 2 in testing set, otherwise it gave dissatisfying results for the adulterated samples from different botanical origins or the different samples of the same botanical origins. The results showed that NIRS could be applied for rapid detection of authentic and adulterated honey samples, but not for detection of classes of adulteration level and quantification of adulteration level with beet syrup.