Effect of benzoic acid and dopamine hydrochloride as a modulator in the water resistance of Universitetet i Oslo-67: Adsorption performance and mechanism.

The severe hazards on ecological environment and human body caused by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have attracted worldwide substantial attention. In this research, a series of novel modified Universitetet i Oslo-67 (UiO-67) with water resistance were prepared and characterized, which had modified by benzoic acid and dopamine hydrochloride (67-ben-DH). On this basis, the adsorption performance, adsorption kinetics, defect engineering and water resistance of adsorbent were investigated. The results indicated that the excellent pore structure and specific surface area of 67-ben-DH-6 (molar ratio of Zr4+ to DH was 1:6) were retained while the adsorption performance and water resistance of the adsorbent were improved. Due to more defects, excellent adsorption diffusion and strong π-π interactions of 67-ben-DH-6, it performed the maximum adsorption capacity of toluene (793 mg g-1). Furthermore, the outstanding water resistance was attributed to the fact that N element of DH reduced the affinity of the adsorbent with water. Finally, the density functional theory (DFT) calculations showed that the adsorbent 67-ben-DH-6 had the maximum adsorption energy for toluene (-99.4 kJ mol-1) and the minimum adsorption energy for water (-17.8 kJ mol-1). Thus, the potential mechanism of 67-ben-DH for efficient toluene adsorption and water resistance was verified from a microscopic perspective.

De novo comparative transcriptome analysis provides new insights into sucrose induced somatic embryogenesis in camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora L.).

BACKGROUND: Somatic embryogenesis is a notable illustration of cell totipotency, by which somatic cells undergo dedifferentiation and then differentiate into somatic embryos. Our previous work demonstrated that pretreatment of immature zygotic embryos with 0.5 M sucrose solution for 72 h efficiently induced somatic embryo initiation in camphor tree. To better understand the molecular basis of somatic embryogenesis induced by osmotic stress, de novo transcriptome sequencing of three tissues of camphor tree (immature zygotic embryos, sucrose-pretreated immature zygotic embryos, and somatic embryos induced from sucrose-pretreated zygotic embryos) were conducted using Illumina Hiseq 2000 platform. RESULTS: A total of 30.70 G high quality clean reads were obtained from cDNA libraries of the three samples. The overall de novo assembly of cDNA sequence data generated 205592 transcripts, with an average length of 998 bp. 114229 unigenes (55.56 % of all transcripts) with an average length of 680 bp were annotated with gene descriptions, gene ontology terms or metabolic pathways based on Blastx search against Nr, Nt, Swissprot, GO, COG/KOG, and KEGG databases. CEGMA software identified 237 out of 248 ultra-conserved core proteins as 'complete' in the transcriptome assembly, showing a completeness of 95.6 %. A total of 897 genes previously annotated to be potentially involved in somatic embryogenesis were identified. Comparative transcriptome analysis showed that a total of 3335 genes were differentially expressed in the three samples. The differentially expressed genes were divided into six groups based on K-means clustering. Expression level analysis of 52 somatic embryogenesis-related genes indicated a high correlation between RNA-seq and qRT-PCR data. Gene enrichment analysis showed significantly differential expression of genes responding to stress and stimulus. CONCLUSIONS: The present work reported a de novo transcriptome assembly and global analysis focused on gene expression changes during initiation and formation of somatic embryos in camphor tree. Differential expression of somatic embryogenesis-related genes indicates that sucrose induced somatic embryogenesis may share or partly share the mechanisms of somatic embryogenesis induced by plant hormones. This study provides comprehensive transcript information and gene expression data for camphor tree. It could also serve as an important platform resource for further functional studies in plant embryogenesis.

Sorbitol dehydrogenase inhibitor protects the liver from ischemia/reperfusion-induced injury via elevated glycolytic flux and enhanced sirtuin 1 activity.

Sorbitol dehydrogenase (SDH), a key enzyme of the polyol pathway, has recently been demonstrated to have an important role in mediating tissue ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. The present study investigated how this enzyme may affect the ischemic liver and the mechanism underlying its effect. Firstly, C57BL/6 mice were subjected to oral administration of CP-470,711 (5 mg/kg body weight/day for five days) and 70% hepatic I/R. Next the present study further investigated the changes in liver function, histology, inflammation, apoptosis and necrosis; the cytosolic adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and nictotinamide adenine dinucleotide [NAD(H)] contents and the protein level of caspase 3 and sirtuin 1 (SIRT1). The data demonstrated that sorbitol dehydrogenase inhibitor (SDI)-administration significantly alleviated I/R-induced liver injury, palliated histological changes and lowered the level of hepatocyte apoptosis and necrosis. In addition, SDI-pretreatment in ischemic liver markedly maintained the cytosolic ATP and NAD(H) proportion, enhanced SIRT1 and suppressed the activation of caspase 3 at the protein level. The findings in the present study revealed that the flux through SDH may render the liver more vulnerable to I/R-induced injury and interventions targeting this enzyme may provide a novel adjunctive approach to protect from severe tissue injury following liver ischemia.