Influence of the functionalisation of mesoporous silica material UVM-7 on polyphenol oxidase enzyme capture and enzymatic browning

The authors are grateful to the Spanish Government (Projects RTI2018-100910-B-C44 and MAT2015-64139-C4-1) and the Generalitat Valencia (Project PROMETEO/2018/024) for supportMuñoz-Pina, S.; Ros-Lis, JV.; Argüelles Foix, AL.; Martínez-Máñez, R.; Andrés Grau, AM. (2020). Influence of the functionalisation of mesoporous silica material UVM-7 on polyphenol oxidase enzyme capture and enzymatic browning. Food Chemistry. 310:1-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2019.125741S1831

Multi-Agent Meta-Search Engine Based on Domain Ontology

Abstract. This article describes a new approach of HTML pages search via Internet, which is based on the semantic understanding of pages content by means of multi-agent technology. Multi-agent text understanding system, which is the basis of the approach, converts an input query and pages, received from conventional search engines, to formalized semantic descriptors, and evaluates similarity of these descriptors. What makes the approach better than the classical one and gives it an ability to cope with current search-via-Internet difficulties more effectively in the text understanding algorithm, which is capable of understanding words synonymy and ambiguity in a text, detecting and resolving sense conflicts between different parts of text, acquiring additional implicit information and working with inter-phrasal context. Semantic descriptors of the text are represented as semantic networks, which include instances of problem domain ontology concepts. Both text understanding and descriptor comparison algorithms use the knowledge about problem domain, and this problem domain is stored in the form of ontology. Ontology contains the information about the language and the problem domain of the texts used, and it can be easily updated by experts in the course of work. The approach described above was applied to the analysis of web-pages related to car industry. As a result a meta-search engine was developed, capable of analyzing pages, retrieved from traditional search engines and sorting pages by their semantic relevance to the user request. In this article one will find description of the system, testing results and system future perspectives

The unravelling of the complex pattern of tyrosinase inhibition

Tyrosinases are responsible for melanin formation in all life domains. Tyrosinase inhibitors are used for the prevention of severe skin diseases, in skin-whitening creams and to avoid fruit browning, however continued use of many such inhibitors is considered unsafe. In this study we provide conclusive evidence of the inhibition mechanism of two well studied tyrosinase inhibitors, KA (kojic acid) and HQ (hydroquinone), which are extensively used in hyperpigmentation treatment. KA is reported in the literature with contradicting inhibition mechanisms, while HQ is described as both a tyrosinase inhibitor and a substrate. By visualization of KA and HQ in the active site of TyrBm crystals, together with molecular modeling, binding constant analysis and kinetic experiments, we have elucidated their mechanisms of inhibition, which was ambiguous for both inhibitors. We confirm that while KA acts as a mixed inhibitor, HQ can act both as a TyrBm substrate and as an inhibitor.This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, grant number 419/15 and by the Gurwin Fund for Scientific Research. We also acknowledge the Russell-Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) at the Technion for supporting this research. This research benefited from use of the Technion Center of Structural Biology facility of the Lorry I. Lokey Center for Life Sciences and Engineering. We thank the staff of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (beamlines ID14-4 and ID 29) for provision of synchrotron radiation facilities and assistance. V.G. would like to thank the OxiDesign Spanish project (CTQ2013-48287-R) and D.L. acknowledges support from the Spanish Severo Ochoa Program (SEV-2011-00067).Peer Reviewe