American Ginseng Stimulates Insulin Production and Prevents Apoptosis through Regulation of Uncoupling Protein-2 in Cultured β Cells

American ginseng root displays the ability to achieve glucose homeostasis both experimentally and clinically but the unknown mechanism used by ginseng to achieve its therapeutic effects on diabetes limits its application. Disruption in the insulin secretion of pancreatic β cells is considered the major cause of diabetes. A mitochondrial protein, uncoupling protein-2 (UCP-2) has been found to play a critical role in insulin synthesis and β cell survival. Our preliminary studies found that the extracts of American ginseng inhibit UCP-2 expression which may contribute to the ability of ginseng protecting β cell death and improving insulin synthesis. Therefore, we hypothesized that ginseng extracts suppress UCP-2 in the mitochondria of pancreatic β cells, promoting insulin synthesis and anti-apoptosis (a programmed cell-death mechanism). To test the hypothesis, the serum-deprived quiescent β cells were cultured with or without interleukin-1β (IL-1β), (200 pg ml(−1), a cytokine to induce β cell apoptosis) and water extracts of American ginseng (25 μg per 5 μl administered to wells of 0.5 ml culture) for 24 h. We evaluated effects of ginseng on UCP-2 expression, insulin production, anti-/pro-apoptotic factors Bcl-2/caspase-9 expression and cellular ATP levels. We found that ginseng suppresses UCP-2, down-regulates caspase-9 while increasing ATP and insulin production/secretion and up-regulates Bcl-2, reducing apoptosis. These findings suggest that stimulation of insulin production and prevention of β cell loss by American ginseng extracts can occur via the inhibition of mitochondrial UCP-2, resulting in increase in the ATP level and the anti-apoptotic factor Bcl-2, while down-regulation of pro-apoptotic factor caspase-9 occurs, lowering the occurrence of apoptosis, which support the hypothesis

American ginseng modulates pancreatic beta cell activities

The mechanism of the beneficial effects of Panax quinquefolius (Xiyangshen, American ginseng) on diabetes is yet to be elucidated. Recent studies show that Panax quinquefolius increases insulin production and reduces the death of pancreatic beta cells. Mechanism studies indicate that Panax quinquefolius improves cell's immuno-reactivity and mitochondrial function through various factors. Clinical studies show that Panax quinquefolius improves postprandial glycemia in type 2 diabetic patients. Further studies to identify the component(s) of Panax quinquefolius linked with pancreatic islets/beta cells in vitro and in vivo are warranted for better understanding of the full effects of Panax quinquefolius

Enhancing Hydrogen Production using Single Chamber Microbial Electrolysis Cells by Tackling Hydrogen Scavengers

Biological hydrogen production from renewable feedstocks was reckoned as a promising method for sustainable energy production. Bioelectrochemical hydrogen production using microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) demonstrated superiorities over the conventional methods for hydrogen production. The introduction of the membrane-less single chamber design further improved the feasibility of MECs for practical application, by offering superior electrochemical performance and decreased capital cost. However, as the hydrogen produced via the cathodic electrochemical process became accessible to the microbial communities, the presence of hydrogen scavengers was observed along with significantly decreased hydrogen production. Hydrogen consumptions via methanogenesis was noted as the prevalent hydrogen scavenging process. Though methanogenic hydrogen consumption was well studied, there was still a lack of practical inhibitory methods for the practical applications, as the existing approaches demonstrated limited effectiveness and/or increased cost and operational difficulty. On the other hand, homoacetogenesis was considered as a newly identified hydrogen scavenging process in MECs, which could result in a hydrogen production-consumption loop. However, the negative impact of such a loop remained controversial and no effective inhibitory method against homoacetogenesis was reported. Furthermore, due to the presence of hydrogen scavengers along with inefficient designs, previously constructed up-scaled MECs yielded unsatisfactory performance, hindering the potential for the practical application of MECs. The present dissertation aims to develop a practical method against methanogenesis, to investigate and quantify the negative impact of homoacetogenesis on hydrogen production performance and the critical factor determining the homoacetogenic hydrogen consumption rate, to develop an approach to cease homoacetogenic hydrogen production in single chamber MECs, and to investigate the hydrogen production performance using real feedstocks in up-scaled single chamber MECs with the developed inhibitory methods against hydrogen scavengers. The results in the present dissertation demonstrated significant progress toward understanding and inhibiting hydrogen scavengers to benefit the application of using single chamber MECs for hydrogen production. In the attempt to develop a more practical inhibitory method against methanogenesis, low concentration acetylene (0.1-5%, v/v) was examined as an effective methanogen inhibitor with only periodical injection needed. Current generation and the synergy between fermentative bacteria and exoelectrogens were not negatively affected by acetylene. These results demonstrated the great potential of using acetylene as a cost-effective inhibitor against methanogenesis in MECs. In terms of further understanding the impact of homoacetogenesis, single chamber MECs were operated under various conditions and the hydrogen production performance was monitored. Hydrogen partial pressure was determined as the most critical factor affecting homoacetogenic hydrogen consumption rate, while acetate concentration had little impact. At higher hydrogen partial pressures, hydrogen yield and energy efficiency decreased to as low as 66% and 48%, respectively, indicating the significant impact of the hydrogen production-consumption loop. In the attempt to cease the homoacetogenic hydrogen consumption, low concentration chloroform (0.005-0.03%, v/v) was tested as highly effective against homoacetogenesis, enhancing hydrogen yield and cathodic hydrogen recovery from 21% and 14% to 94% and 90%, respectively. The inhibitory effect was more specific against homoacetogens, as the electrochemical performance was not significantly affected. With the promising inhibitory effects of the developed method, a 10 L single chamber MEC with a high electrode surface area to volume ratio (66 m2/m3) was constructed. In the 10 L MEC, 0.02% (v/v) chloroform enhanced the hydrogen production rate from 0 L/L/D to 4.9 L/L/D and the current density from 12-16 A/m2 to 18-21 A/m2, demonstrating promising hydrogen production performance in the up-scaled MEC. To further examine the potential practical application of the up-scaled MEC for hydrogen production, the hydrogen yield and the hydrogen production rate were examined in the 10 L MEC using glucose, and validated using real lignocellulosic hydrolysate and brewery wastewater, respectively. The hydrogen yield using lignocellulosic hydrolysate was as high as 91% based on the dosed substrate, though the energy efficiency based on the input electricity was determined to be low (<62%). The hydrogen production rate using brewery wastewater was determined as high as 33.9 L/L/D, yet primarily from dark fermentation instead of the MEC process. Further investigations are still warranted for improving the efficiency of the up-scaled single chamber MECs

Purification and Partial Characterization of Genetically Engineered Thiol Protease Over-expressed in Escherichia Coli and Analysis of Priming Effects on Free Amino Acid Accumulation in Pinus Taeoa Seeds

The overall objective of an ongoing project is to determine the physiological and genetic mechanisms responsible for the invigoration of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) seeds subjected to controlled water stress through solid matrix priming (SMP). It is hypothesized that the invigoration is due to a change in the sequence of events in the germinating seed where storage protein degradation and mobilization which normally commence after germination are stimulated to occur before radical emergence. The mobilization of protein reserves provides: osmotically active substances for osmotic adjustment leading to increased capacity of the embryo to grow and the components for synthesis of new proteins for the growing plant. It is also hypothesized that thiol protease (TP) is a major enzyme involved in the degradation of storage proteins when seeds are primed, as it is known to degrade reserve proteins, to be active during germination and to be up-regulated by water stress. As one effort toward the overall objective, the first chapter concerns TP antigen production to make anti-TP antibodies so that it becomes possible to further elucidate TP functions at the translation and post-translation levels cellularly and subcellularly. In addition, the over-expressed TP protein provides a way to efficiently purify the enzyme by immunoaffinity chromatography from loblolly pine. The second chapter, without direct relations to Chapter I but as another step toward the overall goal, concerns SMP effects on free amino acid accumulation and the relationships among free amino acid accumulation, TP activity increase and decrease of water potential

Cellulose synthase promoter and method for modifiying cellulose and lignin biosynthesis in plants

This invention relates to an isolated cellulose synthase promoter, methods for genetically altering cellulose and lignin biosynthesis, and to methods for improving strength properties of juvenile wood and fiber in trees. The invention further relates to methods for identifying regulatory elements in a cellulose synthase promoter and to methods for augmenting expression of polynucleotides operably linked to a cellulose synthase promoter.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1037/thumbnail.jp

Cellulose synthase encoding polynucleotides and uses thereof

The invention relates to isolated polynucleotides encoding functional cellulose synthases and UDP-glucose binding domain thereof, transgenic plants and plant cells transformed with the polynucleotides. The invention further relates to methods of transforming plants and plant cells with cellulose synthase or UDP-encoding polynucleotides.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1113/thumbnail.jp

End-to-End Entity Detection with Proposer and Regressor

Named entity recognition is a traditional task in natural language processing. In particular, nested entity recognition receives extensive attention for the widespread existence of the nesting scenario. The latest research migrates the well-established paradigm of set prediction in object detection to cope with entity nesting. However, the manual creation of query vectors, which fail to adapt to the rich semantic information in the context, limits these approaches. An end-to-end entity detection approach with proposer and regressor is presented in this paper to tackle the issues. First, the proposer utilizes the feature pyramid network to generate high-quality entity proposals. Then, the regressor refines the proposals for generating the final prediction. The model adopts encoder-only architecture and thus obtains the advantages of the richness of query semantics, high precision of entity localization, and easiness of model training. Moreover, we introduce the novel spatially modulated attention and progressive refinement for further improvement. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our model achieves advanced performance in flat and nested NER, achieving a new state-of-the-art F1 score of 80.74 on the GENIA dataset and 72.38 on the WeiboNER dataset

Research on Deformation Evolution of a Large Toppling Based on Comprehensive Remote Sensing Interpretation and Real-Time Monitoring

Deep, unstable slopes are highly developed in mountainous areas, especially in the Minjiang River Basin, Sichuan Province, China. In this study, to reveal their deformation evolution characteristics for stability evaluation and disaster prevention, multi-period optical remote sensing images (2010–2019), SBAS-InSAR data (January 2018–December 2019), and on-site real-time monitoring (December 2017–September 2020) were utilized to monitor the deformation of a large deep-seated toppling, named the Tizicao (TZC) Toppling. The obtained results by different techniques were cross-validated and synthesized in order to introduce the spatial and temporal characteristics of the toppling. It was found that the displacements on the north side of the toppling are much larger than those on the south side, and the leading edge exhibits a composite damage pattern of “collapse failure” and “bulging cracking”. The development process of the toppling from the formation of a tensile crack at the northern leading edge to the gradual pulling of the rear edge was revealed for a time span of up to ten years. In addition, the correlation between rainfall, earthquakes, and GNSS time series showed that the deformation of the toppling is sensitive to rainfall but does not change under the effect of earthquakes. The surface-displacement-monitoring method in this study can provide a reference for the evolution analysis of unstable slopes with a large span of deformation.</p

Abrupt drainage basin reorganization following a Pleistocene river capture

River capture is a dramatic natural process of internal competition through which mountainous landscapes evolve and respond to perturbations in tectonics and climate. River capture may occur when one river network grows at the expense of another, resulting in a victor that steals the neighboring headwaters. While river capture occurs regularly in numerical models, field observations are rare. Here we document a late Pleistocene river capture in the Yimeng Mountains, China that abruptly shifted 25 km^2 of drainage area from one catchment to another. River terraces and imbricated cobbles indicate that the main channel incised 27 m into granitic bedrock within 80 kyr, following the capture event, and upstream propagating knickpoints and waterfalls reversed the flow direction of a major river. Topographic analysis shows that the capture shifted the river basins far from topographic equilibrium, and active divide migration is propagating the effects of the capture throughout the landscape