Molecular characteristics of kappa-selenocarrageenan and application in green synthesis of silver nanoparticles.

Selenium is an essential trace element in human body, and kappa-selenocarrageenan (Se-car) is an organic source of selenium supplement. To further utilize Se-car in food packaging, biotherapy or biosensor, the molecular information of Se-car was characterized here and multi-functional Ag NPs synthesized by Se-car were fabricated. Results of GPC-MALLS, FTIR, potentiometric titration, and intrinsic viscosity showed that Se-car was polymerized by nearly 22 basic units of disaccharide. Sixty-four percentage of sulfated groups (SO42-) in carrageenan was replaced by selenium acid (SeO32-), which belonged to weak acid resulting from a gradually decrease of ζ-potential with acidity process to pH 1.0. Besides, the capacity of biosynthesis silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) by Se-car was studied and it made a comparison with κ-carrageenan. Results exhibited that Se-car could serve as an efficient reducing and capping agent for Ag NPs fabrication (remarked as Se-car@Ag). The kapp of Se-car@Ag NPs for catalyzing 4-NP degradation was 2.14 × 10-2 s-1. Antibacterial test revealed Se-car@Ag had an ability to inhibit the growth of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. To combine the selenium health benefit and functional metal nanoparticles, Se-car@Ag might have potential applications in multiple areas like medicine, disease diagnostic, and drug delivery.

TCMID 2.0: a comprehensive resource for TCM.

As a traditional medical intervention in Asia and a complementary and alternative medicine in western countries, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is capturing worldwide attention in life science field. Traditional Chinese Medicine Integrated Database (TCMID), which was originally launched in 2013, was a comprehensive database aiming at TCM's modernization and standardization. It has been highly recognized among pharmacologists and scholars in TCM researches. The latest release, TCMID 2.0 (http://www.megabionet.org/tcmid/), replenished the preceding database with 18 203 herbal ingredients, 15 prescriptions, 82 related targets, 1356 drugs, 842 diseases and numerous new connections between them. Considering that chemical changes might take place in decocting process of prescriptions, which may result in new ingredients, new data containing the prescription ingredients was collected in current version. In addition, 778 herbal mass spectrometry (MS) spectra related to 170 herbs were appended to show the variation of herbal quality in different origin and distinguish genuine medicinal materials from common ones while 3895 MS spectra of 729 ingredients were added as the supplementary materials of component identification. With the significant increase of data, TCMID 2.0 will further facilitate TCM's modernization and enhance the exploration of underlying biological processes that are response to the diverse pharmacologic actions of TCM.

Dissecting the Underlying Pharmaceutical Mechanism of Chinese Traditional Medicine Yun-Pi-Yi-Shen-Tong-Du-Tang Acting on Ankylosing Spondylitis through Systems Biology Approaches.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been served as complementary medicine for Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) treatment for a long time. Yun-Pi-Yi-Shen-Tong-Du-Tang (Y-Y-T) is a novel empirical formula designed by Prof. Chengping Wen. In this study, a retrospective investigation supported efficacy of Y-Y-T and then we deciphered the underlying molecular mechanism of the efficacy. Herbal ingredients and targeting proteins were collected from TCMID. PPI networks were constructed to further infer the relationship among Y-Y-T, drugs used for treating AS, differentially expressed genes of AS patients and AS disease proteins. Finally, it was suggested that TLR signaling pathway and T cell receptor signaling pathway may involve in the biological processes of AS progression and contribute to the curative effect and proteins such as JAK2, STAT3, HSP90AA1, TNF and PTEN were the key targets. Our systemic investigation to infer therapeutic mechanism of Y-Y-T for AS treatment provides a new insight in understanding TCM pharmacology.