The role of Chinese herbal medicine in the treatment of diabetic nephropathy by regulating endoplasmic reticulum stress.

Diabetic nephropathy (DN), a prevalent microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus, is the primary contributor to end-stage renal disease in developed countries. Existing clinical interventions for DN encompass lifestyle modifications, blood glucose regulation, blood pressure reduction, lipid management, and avoidance of nephrotoxic medications. Despite these measures, a significant number of patients progress to end-stage renal disease, underscoring the need for additional therapeutic strategies. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response, a cellular defense mechanism in eukaryotic cells, has been implicated in DN pathogenesis. Moderate ER stress can enhance cell survival, whereas severe or prolonged ER stress may trigger apoptosis. As such, the role of ER stress in DN presents a potential avenue for therapeutic modulation. Chinese herbal medicine, a staple in Chinese healthcare, has emerged as a promising intervention for DN. Existing research suggests that some herbal remedies may confer renoprotective benefits through the modulation of ER stress. This review explores the involvement of ER stress in the pathogenesis of DN and the advancements in Chinese herbal medicine for ER stress regulation, aiming to inspire new clinical strategies for the prevention and management of DN.

Defensive Resistance of Cowpea Vigna unguiculata Control Megalurothrips usitatus Mediated by Jasmonic Acid or Insect Damage.

Vigna unguiculata is a vital vegetable crop in Southeast Asia, and Megalurothrips usitatus can cause huge damage to this crop. Enhancing the resistance of V. unguiculata against M. usitatus is a promising way to protect this crop; however, there is limited information regarding the mechanism underlying the resistance of V. unguiculata against M. usitatus. Here, a behavior assay was performed to explore the resistance of V. unguiculata against M. usitatus after insect damage or treatment by jasmonic acid (JA). Furthermore, transcriptome and metabonomics analysis was used to detect the putative mechanism underlying the resistance of V. unguiculata against M. usitatus. The pre-treatment of Vigna unguiculata with JA or infestation with Megalurothrips usitatus alleviated the damage resulting from the pest insect. We further identified differentially expressed genes and different metabolites involved in flavonoid biosynthesis and alpha-linolenic acid metabolism. Genes of chalcone reductase and shikimate O-hydroxycinnamoyltransferase involved in flavonoid biosynthesis, as well as lipoxygenase and acyl-CoA oxidase involved in alpha-linolenic acid metabolism, were upregulated in plants after herbivory or JA supplementation. The upregulation of these genes contributed to the high accumulation of metabolites involved in flavonoid biosynthesis and the alpha-linolenic acid metabolism pathway. These transcriptional and metabolite changes are potentially responsible for plant defense and a putative regulatory model is thus proposed to illustrate the cowpea defense mechanism against insect attack. Our study provides candidate targets for the breeding of varieties with resistance to insect herbivory by molecular technology.

Does perfect filtering really guarantee perfect phase correction for diffusion MRI data?

Owing to its merit of avoiding noise-floor, phase correction is recently used to reconstruct real-valued diffusion MRI data by employing an image filter to estimate the noise-free background phase. However, several studies report an unexpected signal-loss issue for their reconstruction results, with its causing reason still remaining unclear. Although phase correction has achieved promising results in mitigating the signal-loss issue via improving the employed image filter, we have observed counterintuitive results that an advanced filter generates severe artifacts in our previous work. Considering the potential issues with phase correction procedures, in this paper, we argue that even a perfect image filter is insufficient to produce perfect phase correction. To point out the reason why phase correction introduces signal-loss and address this issue, we first propose a complex polar coordinate system (CPCS) to analyze its procedures in detail; second, based on CPCS, we find that phase correction has not sufficiently utilized the background phase, and thus propose a quantitative criterion to fully exploit the background phase; eventually, we propose a phase calibration procedure to remedy current phase correction. Extensive experimental results, including those on synthetic and real diffusion MRI data, demonstrate that our proposed method significantly reduces signal-loss and also eliminates artifacts in FA maps, particularly with improved accuracy on FA.

The male-produced aggregation pheromone of the bean flower thrips Megalurothrips usitatus in China: identification and attraction of conspecifics in the laboratory and field.

BACKGROUND: Thrips, Megalurothrips usitatus, usually display aggregation behavior, which is probably mediated by a male-produced aggregation pheromone. Aggregation pheromones are species-specific, and can be used to develop commercial lures for monitoring and mass-trapping of pests. The active components of the aggregation pheromone for four thrips species have been identified. However, the components of M. usitatus-produced aggregation pheromone are still not clear. RESULT: Y-tube olfactometer assays showed that both male and virgin female M. usitatus were significantly attracted to male but not female volatiles. This was additionally supported by electroantennogram (EAG) assays. Coupled gas chromatography-electroantennogram detection (GC-EAD) showed that one component of male-specific odors elicited a significant electrophysiological response. This compound was characterized as (2E,6E)-farnesyl acetate, which is structurally different from the active components of the aggregation pheromones of other reported thrips species. Electroantennal responses of M. usitatus increased with increasing doses of synthetic (2E,6E)-farnesyl acetate. Additionally, this compound significantly attracted adults in laboratory behavioral bioassays. Under field conditions, sticky traps with synthetic (2E,6E)-farnesyl acetate caught 1.5-7-fold more M. usitatus than controls, and this effect of the compound at a dose of 60 µg lasted at least 6 days. CONCLUSION: (2E,6E)-Farnesyl acetate was identified as the male-produced aggregation pheromone of M. usitatus. It could attract this thrips species under laboratory and field conditions, suggesting considerable potential as a commercial application to control M. usitatus populations. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

The impact of Bt maize expressing the Cry1Ac protein on non-target arthropods.

From 2014 to 2016, individuals of the principal non-target arthropod (NTA) species in a field of Bt maize expressing the Cry1Ac protein (Bt38) were compared to those in a control field of the corresponding non-transformed near isoline (Z58). For all 3 years, the population dynamics and biodiversity of NTAs were analyzed to determine if any differences might be attributable to the genetically modified (GM) maize being evaluated. The main NTAs in these fields were Aphidoidea, Pentatomidae,Araneae, and Coccinellidae. Temporal variation in NTA diversity across sample dates within a year showed no significant differences between the Bt maize and the non-Bt maize field in the total number of individuals of the dominant arthropod species per 25 plants, the Shannon index (H), Pielou index (J), Simpson index (D), and Bray-Curtis index. The cultivation of Bt corn failed to show any detrimental evidence on individuals, H, J, D, and Bray-Curtis index of NTAs, and these parameters were identical in Bt and non-Bt corn plots. These results provide further evidence of the lack of ecological impact of GM maize.

Development and preparation of active starch films carrying tea polyphenol.

Starch films incorporated with tea polyphenol (TP) were developed to produce active food packaging. The effect of the incorporation of TP with different content on the structure, physicochemical properties, antioxidant activity and antimicrobial activity of the starch films was systematically evaluated. Results showed that TP was well dispersed in the starch matrix, which induced a slight influence on the surface and barrier properties of the films. TP addition led to an important improvement in antioxidant capability, as well as inhibition efficiency against the microorganisms of S. aureus and E. coli. However, a decrease in mechanical properties of films was observed. Moreover, a new automatic counting method which combined the computer vision and machine learning algorithm was developed to identify and count the colonies, and the method performed much faster without subjective uncertainty.