Adiposis is reputed as a twin disease of type 2 diabetes and
greatly harmful to human health. In order to understand the
molecular mechanisms of adiposis, the changes of physiological,
pathological, epigenetic and correlative gene expression were
investigated during the adiposis development of C57BL/6J mice
induced by long time (9 months) high-fat and high-sucrose diet
(HFSD) sustainably. The results showed that mRNA transcription
level of the Leptin, Glut4 and Glut2 genes have been obviously
changed, which exhibit a negative correlation with methylation
on their promoter DNA. The results also revealed that HFSD
induced higher level of DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1) in fat
tissue might play important role in regulating the changes of
methylation pattern on Glut4 and Leptin genes, and which might
be one of the molecular mechanisms for the adiposis
development.
Oxidative stress plays an important role in pressure overloadinduced
cardiac remodeling. The purpose of this study was to determine whether apocynin, a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase inhibitor, attenuates pressure overload-induced cardiac remodeling in rats. After abdominal aorta constriction, the surviving rats were randomly divided into four groups: sham group, abdominal aorta constriction group, apocynin group, captopril group. Left ventricular pathological changes were studied using Masson’s trichrome staining. Metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) levels in the left ventricle were analyzed by western blot and gelatin zymography. Oxidative stress and apoptotic index were also examined in cardiomyocytes using dihydroethidium and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL), respectively. Our results showed that abdominal aorta constriction significantly caused excess collagen deposition and cardiac insult. Treatment with apocynin significantly inhibited deposition of collagen and reduced the level of MMP-2. Furthermore, apocynin also decreased the NADPH oxidase activity, reactive oxygen species production and cardiomyocyte apoptotic index. Interestingly, apocynin only inhibited NADPH oxidase activity without affecting its expression or the level of angiotension II in the left ventricle. In conclusion, apocynin reduced collagen deposition, oxidative stress, and inhibited apoptosis, ultimately ameliorating cardiac remodeling by mechanisms that are independent of the renin-angiotensin system.
In our earlier works, we have identified rate-limiting steps in the dark-to-light transition of PSII. By measuring chlorophyll a fluorescence transients elicited by single-turnover saturating flashes (STSFs) we have shown that in diuron-treated samples an STSF generates only F1 (< Fm) fluorescence level, and to produce the maximum (Fm) level, additional excitations are required, which, however, can only be effective if sufficiently long Δτ waiting times are allowed between the excitations. Biological variations in the half-rise time (Δτ1/2) of the fluorescence increment suggest that it may be sensitive to the physicochemical environment of PSII. Here, we investigated the influence of the lipidic environment on Δτ1/2 of PSII core complexes of Thermosynechococcus vulcanus. We found that while non-native lipids had no noticeable effects, thylakoid membrane lipids considerably shortened the Δτ1/2, from ~ 1 ms to ~ 0.2 ms. The importance of the presence of native lipids was confirmed by obtaining similarly short Δτ1/2 values in the whole T. vulcanus cells and isolated pea thylakoid membranes. Minor, lipid-dependent reorganizations were also observed by steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopic measurements. These data show that the processes beyond the dark-to-light transition of PSII depend significantly on the lipid matrix of the reaction center.
Ginseng (Panax ginseng) is a typical perennial shade plant. Aim of this study was to investigate the effects of exogenous hormones on photosynthesis of P. ginseng. At different growth stages, the aerial parts of P. ginseng plants were cut at the stem base and they were inserted into the nutrient solutions containing different exogenous hormones. Then the leaf photosynthesis and water absorbing capacity (absorbing water mass) of the excised plants were measured. The results showed that exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) decreased significantly net photosynthetic rate (PN), stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, and absorbed water mass of excised P. ginseng at all growth stages, while both cytokinin (CTK) and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) enhanced those parameters. Comparing different growth stages, ABA caused more severe inhibition of leaf photosynthesis at the early growth stage, while CTK and IAA showed significant enhancement of leaf photosynthesis at later growth stage. ABA reduced highly intercellular CO2 concentration of P. ginseng at the flowering and green fruit stages, but it had only a small effect at red fruit early and red fruit stages. During the early growth stage, the inhibitory effect of ABA on leaf PN might be caused mainly due to the stomatal limitation. However, the reason for this reduction was complex at the later growth stage and it included stomatal and other factors., X. Li, K. Xu., and Obsahuje bibliografii
We investigated the differential expression of AOX1 multi-gene family and the regulation of alternative respiratory pathway during initial greening development in leaves of rice (Oryza sativa L.) seedlings. After exposing the dark-grown rice seedlings to continuous irradiation, total respiration (Vt), capacity of alternative pathway (Valt), and their ratio (Valt/Vt) increased with the greening of leaves. In this process, AOX1c transcript increased under constant irradiation, while AOX1a and AOX1b transcripts were hardly detected. Thus AOX1c in rice presents a similar expression pattern as AOX2 does in many dicotyledonous species during greening development. Compared with the rapid increase of cyanideresistant respiration in the presence of photon energy, CO2 fixation was not observed until 8 h after the onset of irradiation. The AOX inhibitor salicylhydroxamic acid (SHAM; 1 mM) inhibited 67.3 % of cyanide-insensitive oxygen uptake in dark-grown leaves and 69.4 % of it in leaves grown under irradiation. Dark-grown plants pre-treated with SHAM were then irradiated for 12 h. SHAM did not obviously modify photosynthetic CO2 fixation rate on a chlorophyll (Chl) content basis in both leaves and simultaneously isolated chloroplasts. Hence during initial greening steps of the plants, the induction of alternative pathway and AOX1 expression by irradiation is not directly linked with carbon assimilation of photosynthesis. The application of SHAM partially limited Chl production in rapidly greening leaves, indicating that Chl synthesis in the process of greening might be medicated to some extent by alternative respiratory pathway. and H. Q. Feng ... [et al.].
Feature reduction is an important issue in pattern recognition. Lower feature dimensionality could reduce the complexity and enhance the generalization ability of classifiers. In this paper we propose a new supervised dimensionality reduction method based on Locally Linear Embedding and Distance Metric Learning. First, in order to increase the interclass separability, a linear discriminant transformation learnt from distance metric learning is used to map the original data points to a new space. Then Locally Linear Embedding is adopted to reduce the dimensionality of data points. This process extends the traditional unsupervised Locally Linear Embedding to supervised scenario in a clear and natural way. In addition, it can also be seen as a general framework for developing new supervised dimensionality reduction algorithms by utilizing corresponding unsupervised methods. Extensive classification experiments performed on some real-world and artificial datasets show that the proposed method can achieve comparable to or even better results over other state-of-the-art dimensionality reduction methods.
With untransformed rice cv. Kitaake as control, the characteristics of carbon assimilation and photoprotection of a transgenic rice line over-expressing maize phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC) were investigated. The PEPC activity in untransformed rice was low, but the activity was stimulated under high irradiance or photoinhibitory condition. PEPC in untransformed rice contributed by about 5-10 % to photosynthesis, as shown by the application of the specific inhibitor 3,3-dichloro-2-(dihydroxyphosphinoylmethyl)propenoate (DCDP). When maize PEPC gene was introduced into rice, transgenic rice expressed high amount of maize PEPC protein and had high PEPC activity. Simultaneously, the activity of carbonic anhydrase (CA) transporting CO2 increased significantly. Thus the photosynthetic capacity increased greatly (50 %) under high CO2 supply. In CO2-free air, CO2 release in the leaf was less. In addition, PEPC transgenic rice was more tolerant to photoinhibition. Treating by NaF, an inhibitor of phosphatase, showed that in transgenic rice more phosphorylated light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b-binding complexes (LHC) moved to photosystem 1 (PS1) protecting thus PS2 from photo-damage. Simultaneously, the introduction of maize PEPC gene could activate or induce activities of the key enzymes scavenging active oxygen, such as superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POD). Hence higher PS2 photochemical efficiency and lower superoxygen anion (O2.-) generation and malonyldiadehyde (MDA) content under photoinhibition could improve protection from photo-oxidation. and D. M. Jiao, X. Li, B. H. Ji.