Texture of cooked germinated brown rice subjected to freeze-thaw treatment and its improvement by magnetic field treatment.

This study aimed to investigate the textural changes of cooked germinated brown rice (GBR) during freeze-thaw treatment and propose a strategy for enhancing its texture using magnetic field (MF). Seven freeze-thaw cycles exhibited more pronounced effects compared to 7 days of freezing, resulting in increases in GBR hardness by 85.59 %-164.36 % and decreases in stickiness by 10.34 %-43.55 %. Water loss, structural damage of GBR flour, and starch retrogradation contributed to the deterioration of texture. MF mitigated these effects by inhibiting the transformation of bound water into free water, reducing water loss by 0.39 %-0.57 %, and shortening the phase transition period by 2.0-21.5 min, thereby diminishing structural damage to GBR flour and hindering starch retrogradation. Following MF treatment (5 mT), GBR hardness decreased by 21.00 %, while stickiness increased by 45.71 %. This study elucidates the mechanisms through which MF enhances the texture, offering theoretical insights for the industrial production of high-quality frozen rice products.

Developing a pathway-independent and full-autonomous global resource allocation strategy to dynamically switching phenotypic states.

A grand challenge of biological chemical production is the competition between synthetic circuits and host genes for limited cellular resources. Quorum sensing (QS)-based dynamic pathway regulations provide a pathway-independent way to rebalance metabolic flux over the course of the fermentation. Most cases, however, these pathway-independent strategies only have capacity for a single QS circuit functional in one cell. Furthermore, current dynamic regulations mainly provide localized control of metabolic flux. Here, with the aid of engineering synthetic orthogonal quorum-related circuits and global mRNA decay, we report a pathway-independent dynamic resource allocation strategy, which allows us to independently controlling two different phenotypic states to globally redistribute cellular resources toward synthetic circuits. The strategy which could pathway-independently and globally self-regulate two desired cell phenotypes including growth and production phenotypes could totally eliminate the need for human supervision of the entire fermentation.

Impact Exerted by Nutritional Risk Screening on Clinical Outcome of Patients with Esophageal Cancer.

OBJECTIVE: Preoperative nutritional status of patients is closely associated with their recovery after the surgery. This study aims to ascertain the impact exerted by the nutritional risk screening on clinical outcome of patients with esophageal cancer. METHODS: 160 patients with esophageal cancer aged over 60, having got therapy at the First Hospital of Jilin University from Jun 2016 to Feb 2017 were evaluated by adopting the NRS2002. 80 cases of patients got active therapy of nutritional support, and the other patients not supported nutritionally were selected as the control group. The comparison was drawn between two groups in serum albumin, serum immunoglobulin, postoperative complications, hospitalization, and hospitalization expenses. RESULTS: For all the patients, in 3 and 7 days after the surgery, the serum albumin in the nutritionally supported group outstripped that in group without nutritional support (P < 0.05) regardless of the nutritional risk. For the patients in the risk of nutrition, the IgA in the nutritionally supported group outstripped that of group without nutritional support (P < 0.05) in 3 and 7 days before the surgery, and the serum IgG outstripped that of the group without nutritional support in 1 and 3 days before the surgery (P < 0.05). In terms of the patients in the risk of nutrition, the average hospitalization of nutritionally supported group was shorter (P < 0.05), and the average hospitalization expenses were lower compared with those of the group without nutritional support. And for the patients in no risk, the hospitalization expenses of supported group surmounted those of group without nutritional support (P < 0.05), whereas the average hospitalization took on no statistic difference (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: For the patients in the risk of nutrition, preoperative nutritional support can facilitate the nutritional status and immunization-relative result after surgery, which shall also decrease the average hospitalization and hospitalization cost.

Overexpression of ARF1 is associated with cell proliferation and migration through PI3K signal pathway in ovarian cancer.

ADP-ribosylation factor 1 (ARF1) is a small G protein that regulates many cellular processes such as reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton and is highly expressed in various tumor cells and tissues. However, the role of ARF1 in ovarian cancer progression remains unknown. In the present study, we explored the expression patterns of ARF1 in clinical ovarian cancer samples and adjacent noncancerous tissues. The results revealed that ARF1 overexpressed in EOC tissues and cell lines, compared with the adjacent non-tumorous tissues and normal ovarian cells. In addition, the immunoreactivity of ARF1 was positively correlated with EOC grade and Ki-67 expression. Knockdown of ARF1 expression notably inhibited cell proliferation and migration rate of EOC cells by the auxiliary of PI3K. Taken together, our findings provide new insights into the functional role of ARF1 on EOC cell growth and migration and it may serve as a diagnostic and therapeutic target.

Loss of TAB3 expression by shRNA exhibits suppressive bioactivity and increased chemical sensitivity of ovarian cancer cell lines via the NF-κB pathway.

Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of death among gynaecologic malignancies. Despite many years of research, it still remains sparing in reliable diagnostic markers and methods for early detection and screening. Transforming growth factor ß-activated protein kinase 1 (TAK1)-binding protein 3 (TAB3) was initially characterized as an adapter protein essential for TAK1 activation in response to IL-1ß or TNFα, however, the physiological role of TAB3 in ovarian cancer tumorigenesis is still not fully understood. In this study, we evaluated the effects of TAB3 on ovarian cancer cell lines. Expressions of TAB3 and PCNA (proliferating cell nuclear antigen) were found to be gradually increased in EOC tissues and cell lines, by western blot analysis and qRT-PCR. Distribution of TAB3 was further analysed by immunohistochemistry. In vitro, knockdown of TAB3 expression in HO8910 or SKOV3 ovarian cancer cells significantly inhibited bioactivity of ovarian cancer cells, including proliferation and cell-cycle distribution, and promoted chemical sensitivity to cisplatin and paclitaxel treatment via inhibiting NF-κB pathways. In conclusion, our study strongly suggests a novel function of TAB3 as an oncogene that could be used as a biomarker for ovarian cancer. It provides a new insight into the potential mechanism for therapeutic targeting, in chemotherapy resistance, common in ovarian cancer.