Antioxidant Activity and the Potential Mechanism of the Fruit From Ailanthus altissima Swingle.

The fruits of Ailanthus altissima Swingle (AS) possess a variety of pharmacological activities. Its antioxidant activity and the potential mode of action have not yet been investigated. In in vitro studies, AS revealed the strong reducing power and DPPH scavenging effect, but hydroxyl radical scavenging activity and ferrous ions-chelating ability were not strong. Meanwhile, the oxidative stress RAW264.7 cell injury model was established, the low and medium-doses of AS showed significant protective effects on the viability of H2O2-treated cells by CCK-8 method. Besides, three doses of AS all increased the activities of SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px and decreased the MDA level compared with the H2O2 group, suggesting it significantly relieved oxidative stress of cells. The active ingredients and related targets of AS were collected by HERB and Swiss Target Prediction database, the common targets of drugs and diseases database were conducted by GeneCards database platform and the Venny platform. We screened the core targets of AS like threonine kinase1 (AKT1), mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAPK1), sirtuin-1 (SIRT1), mechanistic target of rapamycin kinase (MTOR) by STRING database, and the key pathways involved PI3K-AKT and FoxO signaling pathway by KEGG pathway enrichment analysis. Besides, qRT-PCR revealed AS preconditioning significantly up-regulated the expression level of AKT1, SIRT1, MAPK1, and MTOR in model cells, and the effect was related to the regulation of FoxO and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. In summary, AS showed significant antioxidant activity and its potential mechanism was regulating FoxO and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.

Spectrum-effect relationship between UPLC fingerprints and antidiabetic and antioxidant activities of Rosa rugosa.

In this study, the antidiabetic and antioxidant properties of the chemical constituents of Rosa rugosa Thunb. (R. rugosa) was evaluated through analysis of spectrum-effect relationship. The ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) fingerprints of 21 batches of R. rugosa were evaluated by similarity analysis (SA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA). The 28 common components were identified by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-orbitrap-HRMS/MS). Meanwhile, the antidiabetic activities and antioxidant activities of 21 batches of R. rugosa were estimated in vitro. Besides, four chemometrics named principal component analysis (PCA), grey correlation analysis (GRA), partial least squares regression (PLSR) and the bivariate correlations analysis (BCA) were applied to construct spectrum-effect relationship between the UPLC fingerprints and biological activities of R. rugosa. The spectrum-effect relationship study revealed that di-O-galloyl-HHDP-glucoside, galloyl-HHDP-glucoside and avicularin were more relevant to antidiabetic activity. Di-O-galloyl-HHDP-glucoside, galloyl-HHDP-glucoside and ellagic acid were the main antioxidant components of R. rugosa. The current bioassay and spectrum-effect relationships are proper for associating sample quality with the active ingredient, and our finding would provide foundation and further understanding of the quality evaluation and quality control of R. rugosa.

Impact of continuous low water stage on the breeding environment of Oncomelania hupensis: a case study of Poyang Lake area in China.

BACKGROUND: Oncomelania hupensis is the only intermediate host of Schistosoma japonicum and plays a decisive role in its transmission. The variation of water level greatly affects the reproduction and growth of snails. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the variations of water level in the Poyang Lake region from 1993 to 2016 combined with satellite imagery to elucidate the evolution of the snail breeding environment. METHODS: By employing remote sensing data from 1993 to 2016 (April-June and September-November), the vegetation area of Poyang Lake and the vegetation area at different elevations were extracted and calculated. Moreover, the average daily water level data from the four hydrological stations (Hukou station, Xingzi station, Tangyin station and Kangshan station) which represent the typical state of Poyang Lake were collected from 1993 to 2016. The variance of the monthly mean water level, inundation time and the average area were analyzed by variance to find a significance level of α = 0.05. RESULTS: According to hydrological data before and after 2003, the average water level after 2003 is significantly lower than that before 2003 in Poyang Lake. After 2003, the time of inundateing the snail breeding period was later in April to June than that before 2003, while the time of wate-falling stage in September to November moved forward after 2003 than before 2003. Of them, the lowest water level affecting the breeding and growing period of O. hupensis in the northern part of Poyang Lake decreased from 11 m to 9 m. After 2003, the expansion of meadow area in the north part of Poyang Lake was mainly concentrated in the elevation of 9-11 m, and the newly increased infested-meadow in the lake area was mainly concentrated in the north part of Poyang Lake. CONCLUSIONS: By comparing the change of water level characteristics in different parts of the Poyang Lake area as well as changes in meadow area before and after 2003, it is found that the water level changes mainly affect the snail breeding area in the northern part of Poyang Lake. The results are helpful for improving scientific measures for snail control in Jiangxi Province. This approach could also be applicible to Dongting Lake area and other lake areas affected by water level changes and can bring significant guidance for snail control in lake areas.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of brain-wide wiring networks in Drosophila at single-cell resolution.

BACKGROUND: Animal behavior is governed by the activity of interconnected brain circuits. Comprehensive brain wiring maps are thus needed in order to formulate hypotheses about information flow and also to guide genetic manipulations aimed at understanding how genes and circuits orchestrate complex behaviors. RESULTS: To assemble this map, we deconstructed the adult Drosophila brain into approximately 16,000 single neurons and reconstructed them into a common standardized framework to produce a virtual fly brain. We have constructed a mesoscopic map and found that it consists of 41 local processing units (LPUs), six hubs, and 58 tracts covering the whole Drosophila brain. Despite individual local variation, the architecture of the Drosophila brain shows invariance for both the aggregation of local neurons (LNs) within specific LPUs and for the connectivity of projection neurons (PNs) between the same set of LPUs. An open-access image database, named FlyCircuit, has been constructed for online data archiving, mining, analysis, and three-dimensional visualization of all single neurons, brain-wide LPUs, their wiring diagrams, and neural tracts. CONCLUSION: We found that the Drosophila brain is assembled from families of multiple LPUs and their interconnections. This provides an essential first step in the analysis of information processing within and between neurons in a complete brain.