Pressurized liquid extraction of active ingredients (ginsenosides) from medicinal plants using non-ionic surfactant solutions.

The feasibility of employing aqueous non-ionic surfactant solutions as an alternative solvent system in pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) is demonstrated for the first time using the roots of American ginseng as model solid samples. When compared to the use of pure water or methanol, the presence of a common non-ionic surfactant (Triton X-100) in water at a concentration above its critical micelle concentration was shown to enhance the amount of pharmacologically active ingredients (ginsenosides) extracted from ginseng roots. The advantages of using aqueous non-surfactant solutions were also demonstrated by comparing extraction performances between ultrasonic-assisted extraction and PLE methods. Furthermore, the combination of PLE and cloud point extraction was shown to be a new and effective approach for the rapid sample preconcentration of herbal materials prior to analysis by high-performance liquid chromatography

A saturated map of common genetic variants associated with human height

Common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are predicted to collectively explain 40-50% of phenotypic variation in human height, but identifying the specific variants and associated regions requires huge sample sizes. Here, using data from a genome-wide association study of 5.4 million individuals of diverse ancestries, we show that 12,111 independent SNPs that are significantly associated with height account for nearly all of the common SNP-based heritability. These SNPs are clustered within 7,209 non-overlapping genomic segments with a mean size of around 90 kb, covering about 21% of the genome. The density of independent associations varies across the genome and the regions of increased density are enriched for biologically relevant genes. In out-of-sample estimation and prediction, the 12,111 SNPs (or all SNPs in the HapMap 3 panel) account for 40% (45%) of phenotypic variance in populations of European ancestry but only around 10-20% (14-24%) in populations of other ancestries. Effect sizes, associated regions and gene prioritization are similar across ancestries, indicating that reduced prediction accuracy is likely to be explained by linkage disequilibrium and differences in allele frequency within associated regions. Finally, we show that the relevant biological pathways are detectable with smaller sample sizes than are needed to implicate causal genes and variants. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive map of specific genomic regions that contain the vast majority of common height-associated variants. Although this map is saturated for populations of European ancestry, further research is needed to achieve equivalent saturation in other ancestries