Quantification of phosphatides in sunflower oils using a potentiometric e-tongue.

Consisting of two fatty acyl groups, phospholipids are a vital part of vegetable oils and the source of essential fatty acids. Moreover, phospholipids influence oxidative and flavor stability and color evolution of vegetable oils, and their quantification has a significant role in the quality assessment of oils. In this study, we proposed a new highly efficient, affordable, environmentally friendly, and simple approach for the evaluation of phospholipid concentrations based on potentiometric multisensor systems coupled with chemometric data processing. Support vector machines, partial least squares, and multiple linear regressions were used to predict phosphatide concentrations based on potentiometric multisensor system responses. Application of multivariate regression tools yielded the following root mean square errors of prediction: 0.005 mg/100 g of oil in the range 0.0-59.4 mg/100 g for refined oils; 0.008 mg/100 g in the range 0.0-100 mg/100 g for low phosphatide oils and 0.24 mg/100 g in the range 100-2270 mg/100 g for high phosphatide oils. This approach can be considered as a rapid and straightforward method to quantify the phosphatides in sunflower oils.

Identification of chlamydial T3SS inhibitors through virtual screening against T3SS ATPase.

Chlamydia trachomatis is a widespread sexually transmitted pathogen that resides within a special vacuole inside host cells. Although acute infection can be treated with antibiotics, chlamydia can enter persistent state, leading to chronic infection that is difficult to cure. Thus, novel anti-chlamydial compounds active against persistent chlamydia are required. Chlamydiae rely upon type III secretion system (T3SS) to inject effector proteins into host cell cytoplasm, and T3SS inhibitors are viewed as promising compounds for treatment of chlamydial infections. C. trachomatis ATPase SctN is an important T3SS component and has not been targeted before. We thus used virtual screening against homology modeled SctN structure to search for SctN inhibitors. Selected compounds were tested for their ability to inhibit chlamydial survival and development within eukaryotic cells, and for the ability to suppress normal T3SS functioning. We identified two compounds that were able to block normal protein translocation through T3SS and inhibit chlamydial survival within eukaryotic cells in 50-100 µm concentrations. These two novel T3SS inhibitors also possessed relatively low toxicity toward eukaryotic cells. A small series of derivatives was further synthesized for the most active of two inhibitors to probe SAR properties.

Exploring bitterness of traditional Chinese medicine samples by potentiometric electronic tongue and by capillary electrophoresis and liquid chromatography coupled to UV detection.

Instrumental bitterness assessment of traditional Chinese herbal medicine (TCM) preparations was addressed in this study. Three different approaches were evaluated, high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to UV detector (HPLC), capillary electrophoresis coupled to UV detector (CE) and a potentiometric multisensor system - electronic tongue (ET). Most studies involving HPLC and CE separations use these as selective instruments for quantification of individual substances. However we employed these techniques to provide chromatographic or electrophoretic sample profiles. These profiles are somewhat analogous to the profiles produced by the ET. Profiles from all instruments were then related to professional sensory panel evaluations using projections on latent structures (PLS) regression. It was found that all three methods allow for bitterness assessment in TCM samples in terms of human sensory panel with root mean squared errors of prediction ca. 0.9 within bitterness scale from 0 (no bitterness) to 6 (maximal bitterness).