Study on interaction between ginsenosides Rg_1,Rb_1 and Ro and bovine serum albumin / 中国中药杂志

Small molecules with physiological or pharmacological activities need to interact with biological macromolecules in order to function in the body. As the protein with the highest proportion of plasma protein,serum albumin is the main protein binding to various endogenous or exogenous small molecules. Serum albumin interacts with small molecules in a reversible non-covalent manner and transports small molecules to target sites. Bovine serum albumin( BSA) is an ideal target protein for drug research because of its low cost and high homology with human serum albumin. The research on the interaction between drugs and BSA has become a hotspot in the fields of pharmacy,medicine,biology and chemistry. In this research,molecular docking method was used to study the interaction between three small ginsenosides with high pharmacological value( Rg_1,Rb_1,Ro) and bovine serum albumin( BSA),and the binding mode information of three ginsenosides interacting with BSA was obtained. The results of molecular docking showed that ginsenosides and amino acid residues in the active pocket of proteins could be combined by hydrophobic action,hydrogen bonding and electrostatic action. The interaction between small ginsenosides and bovine serum albumin is not the only form,and their interaction has many forms of force. The interaction between these molecules and various weak forces is the key factor for the stability of the complex. The results of this study can provide the structural information of computer simulation for the determination of the interaction patterns between active components and proteins of ginseng.

Progress on exosome and effect on regulatory T cells / 中国免疫学杂志

Regulatory T (Treg) cells is an indispensable subset of T lymphocyte with the ability of immunosuppression in the periphery.Thymus-derived Treg cells(CD4+CD25+FOXP3+Treg cells) play a fundamental role in maintaining immune homeostasis in vivo.Treg cells have been actively involved in the onset and development of major human diseases including malignant tumors, autoimmune diseases,infectious diseases,allergic diseases and graft versus host disease(GVHD).Exosomes are membranous vesicles of endosomal origin that released from multiple cells into the extracellular space.They are currently considered to be vehicles containing protein,RNA and MicroRNA which can been transferred to recipient cells to modulate their activity by cell-contact-independent mecha-nism.Exosomes have a great impact on the induction and proliferation of Treg cells,understanding the relation of them will lead to novel therapeutic approaches for cancer immunotherapy,treating autoimmunity,infection,allergy and organ transplantation.

Transcriptome profiling and analysis of Panax japonicus var. major / 中国中药杂志

The rhizome of Panax japonicus var. major have been used as the natural medicinal agent by Chinese traditional doctors for more than thousand years. Most of the therapeutic effects of P. japonicus var. major had been reported due to the presence of tetracyclic or pentacyclic triterpene saponins. In this study, Illumina pair-end RNA-sequencing and de novo splicing were done in order to understand the pathway of triterpenoid saponins in this species. The valid reads data of 15. 6 Gb were obtained. The 62 240 unigenes were finally obtained by de novo splicing. After annotation, we discovered 19 unigenes involved in ginsenoside backbone biosynthesis. Additionally, 69 unigenes and 18 unigenes were predicted to have potential function of cytochrome P450 and UDP-glycosyltransferase based on the annotation results, which may encode enzymes responsible for ginsenoside backbone modification. This study provides global expressed datas for P. japonicus var. major, which will contribute significantly to further genome-wide research and analysis for this species.