Application of the ankle pump method in a sitting position to evaluate calf perforating veins by color Doppler ultrasound.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated the feasibility and efficacy of assessing calf perforating veins (PVs) using the ankle pump in a sitting position (AP-sit) method by color Doppler ultrasound. METHODS: We performed a multicenter prospective clinical trial between November 2022 and October 2023. Eligible patients with chronic venous disease and healthy controls were enrolled. The calf PVs were assessed using three different methods: manual compression in a standing position, manual compression in a sitting position, and AP-sit method. The reflux durations and detection rate of incompetent PVs (IPVs) were compared among the three methods. The number and diameter of calf PVs and distribution of IPVs were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 50 patients with chronic venous disease and 50 healthy controls were included. There were 173 calves analyzed, including 97 healthy calves and 76 calves with chronic venous disease. The number of PVs per calf was higher in the diseased calves (median, 7.0; interquartile range [IQR], 6.0-8.0) than in the healthy calves (median, 5.0; IQR, 3.0-6.0; P < .001). The diameter of IPVs (median, 2.3 mm; IQR, 2.0-3.1 mm) was larger than that of competent PVs (median, 1.4 mm; IQR, 1.2-1.7 mm). Most of the IPVs (78.8%) were located in the medial and posterior middle of the calf. The reflux duration induced by the AP-sit method was greater than that induced by the manual compression methods (P < .001). Although the AP-sit method had a higher detection rate (92.0%) of IPVs than the manual compression methods (71.7% and 74.3% for standing and sitting, respectively; P < .001), especially in the distal lower leg, the manual compression methods found IPVs not found using the AP-sit method. CONCLUSIONS: Diseased calves with chronic venous disease have more PVs than do healthy calves. IPVs are commonly larger than competent PVs, with most IPVs located in the medial and posterior middle of the calf. Most importantly, the AP-sit method provides a convenient and effective approach for assessing the calf PVs, especially those located in the distal calf, as an alternative or complementary method to traditional manual compression, which is valuable in the daily practice of sonographers.

Pituitary neuroendocrine tumor: A neuropsychological comparison with intra-axial tumor.

OBJECTIVE: Despite pituitary neuroendocrine tumor (PitNET) being extra-axial tumors without direct damage to brain tissue, patients with PitNET exhibit neuropsychological impairments. However, it remains unclear whether there are neuropsychological differences between PitNET and intra-axial tumors that directly destroy the brain parenchyma. This prospective study aims to clarify this distinction to inform decision-making for intracranial tumors of diverse origins. METHODS: A total of 146 patients with PitNET, 74 patients with glioma representing intra-axial tumors, and 52 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls were recruited. All patients received standard treatment and postoperative rehabilitation. Clinical data were meticulously collected, and neuropsychological tests were administered to all participants both before and 3 months after surgery. RESULTS: Both PitNET and glioma patients experience the dual burden of cognitive and affective deficits. However, the feature of these deficits differs substantially. In PitNET patients, the deficits are relatively mild and focal, whereas in glioma patients, they are severe and extensive. Specifically, PitNET patients exhibit deficits in memory, anxiety, and negative affect. In contrast, glioma patients display deficits in executive function, attention, anxiety, positive/negative affect, and empathy. Notably, except for persistent memory deficits, the majority of neuropsychological scores declines in PitNET patients are restorable and can reach improvement within a short period after standard surgical therapy and perioperative management. Conversely, glioma patients not only fail to show improvements but also demonstrate worsening in terms of general cognition and memory postoperatively. INTERPRETATION: As an extra-axial tumor, PitNET may exhibit distinctive cognitive and affective functioning compared to intra-axial tumors, highlighting the need for specific treatment approaches for PitNET patients.

Neural response properties predict perceived contents and locations elicited by intracranial electrical stimulation of human auditory cortex.

Intracranial electrical stimulation (iES) of auditory cortex can elicit sound experiences with a variety of perceived contents (hallucination or illusion) and locations (contralateral or bilateral side), independent of actual acoustic inputs. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this elicitation heterogeneity remain undiscovered. Here, we collected subjective reports following iES at 3062 intracranial sites in 28 patients (both sexes) and identified 113 auditory cortical sites with iES-elicited sound experiences. We then decomposed the sound-induced intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) signals recorded from all 113 sites into time-frequency features. We found that the iES-elicited perceived contents can be predicted by the early high-γ features extracted from sound-induced iEEG. In contrast, the perceived locations elicited by stimulating hallucination sites and illusion sites are determined by the late high-γ and long-lasting α features, respectively. Our study unveils the crucial neural signatures of iES-elicited sound experiences in human and presents a new strategy to hearing restoration for individuals suffering from deafness.

Interchromosomal Colocalization with Parental Genes Is Linked to the Function and Evolution of Mammalian Retrocopies.

Retrocopies are gene duplicates arising from reverse transcription of mature mRNA transcripts and their insertion back into the genome. While long being regarded as processed pseudogenes, more and more functional retrocopies have been discovered. How the stripped-down retrocopies recover expression capability and become functional paralogs continually intrigues evolutionary biologists. Here, we investigated the function and evolution of retrocopies in the context of 3D genome organization. By mapping retrocopy-parent pairs onto sequencing-based and imaging-based chromatin contact maps in human and mouse cell lines and onto Hi-C interaction maps in 5 other mammals, we found that retrocopies and their parental genes show a higher-than-expected interchromosomal colocalization frequency. The spatial interactions between retrocopies and parental genes occur frequently at loci in active subcompartments and near nuclear speckles. Accordingly, colocalized retrocopies are more actively transcribed and translated and are more evolutionarily conserved than noncolocalized ones. The active transcription of colocalized retrocopies may result from their permissive epigenetic environment and shared regulatory elements with parental genes. Population genetic analysis of retroposed gene copy number variants in human populations revealed that retrocopy insertions are not entirely random in regard to interchromosomal interactions and that colocalized retroposed gene copy number variants are more likely to reach high frequencies, suggesting that both insertion bias and natural selection contribute to the colocalization of retrocopy-parent pairs. Further dissection implies that reduced selection efficacy, rather than positive selection, contributes to the elevated allele frequency of colocalized retroposed gene copy number variants. Overall, our results hint a role of interchromosomal colocalization in the "resurrection" of initially neutral retrocopies.

Splicing complexity as a pivotal feature of alternative exons in mammalian species.

BACKGROUND: As a significant process of post-transcriptional gene expression regulation in eukaryotic cells, alternative splicing (AS) of exons greatly contributes to the complexity of the transcriptome and indirectly enriches the protein repertoires. A large number of studies have focused on the splicing inclusion of alternative exons and have revealed the roles of AS in organ development and maturation. Notably, AS takes place through a change in the relative abundance of the transcript isoforms produced by a single gene, meaning that exons can have complex splicing patterns. However, the commonly used percent spliced-in (Ψ) values only define the usage rate of exons, but lose information about the complexity of exons' linkage pattern. To date, the extent and functional consequence of splicing complexity of alternative exons in development and evolution is poorly understood. RESULTS: By comparing splicing complexity of exons in six tissues (brain, cerebellum, heart, liver, kidney, and testis) from six mammalian species (human, chimpanzee, gorilla, macaque, mouse, opossum) and an outgroup species (chicken), we revealed that exons with high splicing complexity are prevalent in mammals and are closely related to features of genes. Using traditional machine learning and deep learning methods, we found that the splicing complexity of exons can be moderately predicted with features derived from exons, among which length of flanking exons and splicing strength of downstream/upstream splice sites are top predictors. Comparative analysis among human, chimpanzee, gorilla, macaque, and mouse revealed that, alternative exons tend to evolve to an increased level of splicing complexity and higher tissue specificity in splicing complexity. During organ development, not only developmentally regulated exons, but also 10-15% of non-developmentally regulated exons show dynamic splicing complexity. CONCLUSIONS: Our analysis revealed that splicing complexity is an important metric to characterize the splicing dynamics of alternative exons during the development and evolution of mammals.

Representing linguistic communicative functions in the premotor cortex.

Linguistic communication is often regarded as an action that serves a function to convey the speaker's goal to the addressee. Here, with an functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study and a lesion study, we demonstrated that communicative functions are represented in the human premotor cortex. Participants read scripts involving 2 interlocutors. Each script contained a critical sentence said by the speaker with a communicative function of either making a Promise, a Request, or a Reply to the addressee's query. With various preceding contexts, the critical sentences were supposed to induce neural activities associated with communicative functions rather than specific actions literally described by these sentences. The fMRI results showed that the premotor cortex contained more information, as revealed by multivariate analyses, on communicative functions and relevant interlocutors' attitudes than the perisylvian language regions. The lesion study results showed that, relative to healthy controls, the understanding of communicative functions was impaired in patients with lesions in the premotor cortex, whereas no reliable difference was observed between the healthy controls and patients with lesions in other brain regions. These findings convergently suggest the crucial role of the premotor cortex in representing the functions of linguistic communications, supporting that linguistic communication can be seen as an action.

Circ-Udg Derived from Cyprinid Herpesvirus 2 Promotes Viral Replication.

Cyprinid herpesvirus 2 (CyHV-2) has caused great losses to the gibel carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) industry. Previous studies showed that certain DNA viruses can encode circular RNAs (circRNAs) to regulate virus infection, which provides new clues for the treatment of viral disease. Whether CyHV-2 can encode circRNAs is still unknown. Here, 10 CyHV-2-derived circRNAs were identified, and the function of circ-udg, a circRNA derived from the CyHV-2 uracil DNA glycosylase (udg) gene, was studied. Although the expression level of circ-udg was lower than that of the parental gene, udg, its expression level was elevated in tandem with the proliferation of CyHV-2 and udg. In vitro experiments confirmed that circ-udg could promote the proliferation of CyHV-2. Moreover, circ-udg could encode a truncated UDG protein consisting of 147-amino-acid residues (termed circ-udg-P147). Both UDG and circ-udg-P147 were found to promote CyHV-2 proliferation, but the promoting effect of circ-udg on CyHV-2 proliferation was attenuated after circ-udg lost the ability to encode circ-udg-P147. Also, circ-udg-P147 could not change the transcription level of the udg gene. Interestingly, the UDG protein level was increased by circ-udg-P147. These results deepen the understanding of the genetic information carried by the genome of CyHV-2 and provide a new target for the treatment of gibel carp bleeding disease caused by CyHV-2. IMPORTANCE The outbreak of C. auratus gibelio gill hemorrhagic disease caused by CyHV-2 brought great losses to the gibel carp industry. Therefore, exploring the interaction between CyHV-2 and host and the molecular mechanism of viral infection is of great significance in preventing and treating the gibel carp gill hemorrhagic disease. Although some progress has been made in the study of CyHV-2, the mechanism of interaction between CyHV-2 and crucian carp is still unclear. In this study, we found that CyHV-2 can encode circRNA to regulate virus replication. Our study provides novel information on CyHV-2 functional genomics, a reference for research into the circRNA of other viruses, and theoretical guidance for preventing and treating gibel carp bleeding disease.

Selection and introgression facilitated the adaptation of Chinese native endangered cattle in extreme environments.

Although persistent efforts have identified and characterized a few candidate genes and related biological processes with potential functions in the adaptation of many species to extreme environments, few works have been conducted to determine the genomic basis of adaptation in endangered livestock breeds that have been living in extreme conditions for more than thousands of years. To fill this gap, we sequenced the whole genomes of nine individuals from three Chinese native endangered cattle breeds that are living in high-altitude or arid environments. Phylogenetic and evolutionary history analyses of these three and other six breeds showed that the genetic structure of the cattle populations is primarily related to geographic location. Interestingly, we identified pervasive introgression from the yak to Zhangmu cattle (ZMC) that cover several genes (e.g., NOS2, EGLN1 and EPAS1) involved in the hypoxia response and previously identified as positive selection genes in other species, which suggested that the adaptive introgression from yak may have contributed to the adaptation of ZMC to high-altitude environments. In addition, by contrasting the breeds in opposite living conditions, we revealed a set of candidate genes with various functions from hypoxia response, water metabolism, immune response and body shape change to embryo development and skeletal system development, etc., that may be related to high-altitude or arid adaptation. Our research provides new insights into the recovery and adaptation of endangered native cattle and other species in extreme environments and valuable resources for future research on animal husbandry to cope with climate change.

Genome Size Evolution Mediated by Gypsy Retrotransposons in Brassicaceae.

The dynamic activity of transposable elements (TEs) contributes to the vast diversity of genome size and architecture among plants. Here, we examined the genomic distribution and transposition activity of long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-RTs) in Arabidopsis thaliana (Ath) and three of its relatives, Arabidopsis lyrata (Aly), Eutrema salsugineum (Esa), and Schrenkiella parvula (Spa), in Brassicaceae. Our analyses revealed the distinct evolutionary dynamics of Gypsyretrotransposons, which reflects the different patterns of genome size changes of the four species over the past million years. The rate of Gypsy transposition in Aly is approximately five times more rapid than that of Ath and Esa, suggesting an expanding Aly genome. Gypsy insertions in Esa are strictly confined to pericentromeric heterochromatin and associated with dramatic centromere expansion. In contrast, Gypsy insertions in Spa have been largely suppressed over the last million years, likely as a result of a combination of an inherent molecular mechanism of preferential DNA removal and purifying selection at Gypsy elements. Additionally, species-specific clades of Gypsy elements shaped the distinct genome architectures of Aly and Esa.

Identification and characterization of male reproduction-related genes in pig (Sus scrofa) using transcriptome analysis.

BACKGROUND: The systematic interrogation of reproduction-related genes was key to gain a comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying male reproductive traits in mammals. Here, based on the data collected from the NCBI SRA database, this study first revealed the genes involved in porcine male reproduction as well their uncharacterized transcriptional characteristics. RESULTS: Results showed that the transcription of porcine genome was more widespread in testis than in other organs (the same for other mammals) and that testis had more tissue-specific genes (1210) than other organs. GO and GSEA analyses suggested that the identified test is-specific genes (TSGs) were associated with male reproduction. Subsequently, the transcriptional characteristics of porcine TSGs, which were conserved across different mammals, were uncovered. Data showed that 195 porcine TSGs shared similar expression patterns with other mammals (cattle, sheep, human and mouse), and had relatively higher transcription abundances and tissue specificity than low-conserved TSGs. Additionally, further analysis of the results suggested that alternative splicing, transcription factors binding, and the presence of other functionally similar genes were all involved in the regulation of porcine TSGs transcription. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, this analysis revealed an extensive gene set involved in the regulation of porcine male reproduction and their dynamic transcription patterns. Data reported here provide valuable insights for a further improvement of the economic benefits of pigs as well as future treatments for male infertility.

ICGEC: a comparative method for measuring epigenetic conservation of genes via the integrated signal from multiple histone modifications between cell types.

BACKGROUND: Histone post-translational modifications play crucial roles in epigenetic regulation of gene expression and are known to be associated with the phenotypic differences of different cell types. Therefore, it is of fundamental importance to dissect the genes and pathways involved in such a phenotypic variation at the level of epigenetics. However, the existing comparative approaches are largely based on the differences, especially the absolute difference in the levels of individual histone modifications of genes under contrasting conditions. Thus, a method for measuring the overall change in the epigenetic circumstance of each gene underpinned by multiple types of histone modifications between cell types is lacking. RESULTS: To address this challenge, we developed ICGEC, a new method for estimating the degree of epigenetic conservation of genes between two cell lines. Different from existing comparative methods, ICGEC provides a reliable score for measuring the relative change in the epigenetic context of corresponding gene between two conditions and simultaneously produces a score for each histone mark. The application of ICGEC to the human embryonic stem cell line H1 and four H1-derived cell lines with available epigenomic data for the same 16 types of histone modifications indicated high robustness and reliability of ICGEC. Furthermore, the analysis of the epigenetically dynamic and conserved genes which were defined based on the ICGEC output results demonstrated that ICGEC can deepen our understanding of the biological processes of cell differentiation to overcome the limitations of traditional expression analysis. Specifically, the ICGEC-derived differentiation-direction-specific genes were shown to have putative functions that are well-matched with cell identity. Additionally, H3K79me1 and H3K27ac were found to be the main histone marks accounting for whether an epigenetically dynamic gene was differentially expressed between two cell lines. CONCLUSIONS: The use of ICGEC creates a convenient and robust way to measure the overall epigenetic conservation of individual genes and marks between two conditions. Thus, it provides a basis for exploring the epigenotype-phenotype relationship. ICGEC can be deemed a state-of-the-art method tailored for comparative epigenomic analysis of changes in cell dynamics.

Correlated Evolution of Large DNA Fragments in the 3D Genome of Arabidopsis thaliana.

In eukaryotes, the three-dimensional (3D) conformation of the genome is far from random, and this nonrandom chromatin organization is strongly correlated with gene expression and protein function, which are two critical determinants of the selective constraints and evolutionary rates of genes. However, whether genes and other elements that are located close to each other in the 3D genome evolve in a coordinated way has not been investigated in any organism. To address this question, we constructed chromatin interaction networks (CINs) in Arabidopsis thaliana based on high-throughput chromosome conformation capture data and demonstrated that adjacent large DNA fragments in the CIN indeed exhibit more similar levels of polymorphism and evolutionary rates than random fragment pairs. Using simulations that account for the linear distance between fragments, we proved that the 3D chromosomal organization plays a role in the observed correlated evolution. Spatially interacting fragments also exhibit more similar mutation rates and functional constraints in both coding and noncoding regions than the random expectations, indicating that the correlated evolution between 3D neighbors is a result of combined evolutionary forces. A collection of 39 genomic and epigenomic features can explain much of the variance in genetic diversity and evolutionary rates across the genome. Moreover, features that have a greater effect on the evolution of regional sequences tend to show higher similarity between neighboring fragments in the CIN, suggesting a pivotal role of epigenetic modifications and chromatin organization in determining the correlated evolution of large DNA fragments in the 3D genome.

Automatic Identification of Breast Ultrasound Image Based on Supervised Block-Based Region Segmentation Algorithm and Features Combination Migration Deep Learning Model.

Breast cancer is a high-incidence type of cancer for women. Early diagnosis plays a crucial role in the successful treatment of the disease and the effective reduction of deaths. In this paper, deep learning technology combined with ultrasound imaging diagnosis was used to identify and determine whether the tumors were benign or malignant. First, the tumor regions were segmented from the breast ultrasound (BUS) images using the supervised block-based region segmentation algorithm. Then, a VGG-19 network pretrained on the ImageNet dataset was applied to the segmented BUS images to predict whether the breast tumor was benign or malignant. The benchmark data for bio-validation were obtained from 141 patients with 199 breast tumors, including 69 cases of malignancy and 130 cases of benign tumors. The experiment showed that the accuracy of the supervised block-based region segmentation algorithm was almost the same as that of manual segmentation; therefore, it can replace manual work. The diagnostic effect of the combination feature model established based on the depth feature of the B-mode ultrasonic imaging and strain elastography was better than that of the model established based on these two images alone. The correct recognition rate was 92.95%, and the AUC was 0.98 for the combination feature model.

Chromatin Signature and Transcription Factor Binding Provide a Predictive Basis for Understanding Plant Gene Expression.

Chromatin accessibility and post-transcriptional histone modifications play important roles in gene expression regulation. However, little is known about the joint effect of multiple chromatin modifications on the gene expression level in plants, despite that the regulatory roles of individual histone marks such as H3K4me3 in gene expression have been well-documented. By using machine-learning methods, we systematically performed gene expression level prediction based on multiple chromatin modifications data in Arabidopsis and rice. We found that as few as four histone modifications were sufficient to yield good prediction performance, and H3K4me3 and H3K36me3 being the top two predictors with known functions related to transcriptional initiation and elongation, respectively. We demonstrated that the predictive powers differed between protein-coding and non-coding genes as well as between CpG-enriched and CpG-depleted genes. We also showed that the predictive model trained in one tissue or species could be applied to another tissue or species, suggesting shared underlying mechanisms. More interestingly, the gene expression levels of conserved orthologs are easier to predict than the species-specific genes. In addition, chromatin state of distal enhancers was moderately correlated to gene expression but was dispensable if given the chromatin features of the proximal regions of genes. We further extended the analysis to transcription factor (TF) binding data. Strikingly, the combinatorial effects of only a few TFs were roughly fit to gene expression levels in Arabidopsis. Overall, by using quantitative modeling, we provide a comprehensive and unbiased perspective on the epigenetic and TF-mediated regulation of gene expression in plants.

Transcriptomic dynamics provide an insight into the mechanism for silicon-mediated alleviation of salt stress in cucumber plants.

Salinity decreases the yield and quality of crops. Silicon (Si) has been widely reported to have beneficial effects on plant growth and development under salt stress. However, the mechanism is still poorly understood. In an attempt to identify genes or gene networks that may be orchestrated to improve salt tolerance of cucumber plants, we sequenced the transcriptomes of both control and salt-stressed cucumber leaves in the presence or absence of added Si. Seedlings of cucumber 'JinYou 1' were subjected to salt stress (75 mM NaCl) without or with addition of 0.3 mM Si. Plant growth, photosynthetic gas exchange and transcriptomic dynamics were investigated. The results showed that Si addition improved the growth and photosynthetic performance of cucumber seedlings under salt stress. The comparative transcriptome analysis revealed that Si played an important role in shaping the transcriptome of cucumber: the expressions of 1469 genes were altered in response to Si treatment in the control conditions, and these genes were mainly involved in ion transport, hormone and signal transduction, biosynthetic and metabolic processes, and stress and defense responses. Under salt stress alone, 1482 genes with putative functions associated with metabolic processes and responses to environmental stimuli have changed their expression levels. Si treatment shifted the transcriptome of salt-stressed cucumber back to that of the control, as evidenced that among the 708 and 774 genes that were up- or down-regulated under salt stress, a large majority of them (609 and 595, respectively) were reverted to the normal expression levels. These results suggest that Si may act as an elicitor to precondition cucumber plants and induce salt tolerance. The study may help us understand the mechanism for silicon-mediated salt tolerance and provide a theoretical basis for silicon application in crop production in saline soils.

Subcategorization of Ultrasonographic BI-RADS Category 4: Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy in Diagnosing Breast Lesions and Influence of Clinical Factors on Positive Predictive Value.

To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of subcategories 4a-4c of the second edition of the Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) ultrasonography (US) lexicon, and to investigate whether clinical factors influence the positive predictive values (PPVs). Overall, 1240 breast lesions in 1227 women diagnosed on ultrasound as category 4 and with pathology were included. The PPV with 95% confidence interval (CI) was 13.6% (95% CI: 11%, 16%) in BI-RADS 4a, 50.0% (95% CI: 44%, 56%) in BI-RADS 4b and 86.0% (95% CI: 82%, 90%) in BI-RADS 4c. Patients' age significantly affected PPVs for subcategories 4a-4c, whereas radiologists' experience and application time had little influence on PPVs for subcategories 4a-4c. In conclusion, the diagnostic accuracies of subcategories 4b and 4c were superior to subcategory 4a. Patients' age significantly affected PPVs for subcategories 4a-4c. Utilizing the subcategories of category 4 was a feasible method regardless of radiologists' experience and application time.

Coronary Artery Vascular Segmentation on Limited Data via Pseudo-Precise Label.

The scale of training data is significant in segmentation task, especially in segmenting the medical coronary artery angiograms. Traditional semantic segmentation networks have been restricted in this field, due to the particularity of cardiac coronary angiography data, that is, it is very difficult to balance the manual labeling costs and network accuracy. On the basis of these observations, we propose a new method to generate the so-called `pseudo-precise' label and a complementary training pipeline, which can improve the performance of the networks on the premise of reducing labor costs as much as possible. Our method can thus increase the f1-score by 4%-11% with the same amount of precisely labeled data.

N-stearoyltyrosine dipotassium ameliorates high-fat diet-induced obesity in C57BL/6 mice.

N-stearoyltyrosine dipotassium (NST-2K) as a neuroprotective candidate is currently in preclinical studies in China. This study investigated the anti-obese effect of NST-2K in high-fat diet-induced obese (DIO) mice. The DIO mice were induced from male C57BL/6 mice by feeding high-fat diet for 11-weeks and treated orally with NST-2K for other 4 weeks. The treatments of DIO mice with NST-2K at 60 or 100 mg/kg/day suppressed the body weight gain, decreased both visceral fat weight and adipocyte size without influence on food intake. To evaluate the effect of NST-2K on lipid metabolism, lipid parameters and several key molecules in the plasma, liver, duodenum mucosa and adipose tissue were analyzed. NST-2K ameliorated the low-grade inflammation in liver, inhibited pancreatic lipase activity in duodenum mucosa, activated ß-oxidation system and reduced lipogenesis, thus suppressed lipid accumulation in the liver, reduced adipocyte size and improved lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. Overall, without influence on food intake, NST-2K ameliorated high-fat diet-induced obesity via suppressing liver inflammation, inhibiting dietary fat absorption, promoting lipolysis and reducing lipogenesis.