PHYTOCHEMICAL AND ANTIOXIDANT CHARACTERIZATION OF THINNED IMMATURE CITRUS UNSHIU FRUITS

Objective: We aimed to evaluate the characterization of thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits with regard to their phytochemical profile and antioxidant capacity.Methods: Determination of total phenolic, flavonoid, and carotenoid and ascorbic acid contents was done by UV-Visible spectrophotometry, whereas UPLC-mass detection was used for the analysis of individual flavanone (naringin, hesperidin, hesperetin, neohesperedine and narirutin) and flavonol (rutin). In addition, free radicals (DPPH, O2-, H2O2 and NO) scavenging assays were used to determine the antioxidant capacity.Results: Naringin, hesperidine, neohesperedine and narirutin were the main flavanones in all thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits. The contents of total phenolic, flavonoid and carotenoid were more prevalent in immature fruits than the level found in mature fruits. All thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits possess an evident antioxidant capacity. The immature Citrus extract concentrations providing 50% inhibition (IC50) for free radicals; 1.2-1.49 mg/ml for DPPH, 1.03-1.46 mg/ml for superoxide, 1.95-3.43 mg/ml for hydrogen peroxide and 1.64-3.45 mg/ml for nitric oxide was lower than those of mature Citrus extracts.Conclusion: Thinned immature Citrus unshiu fruits could be an economic and readily accessible source of natural antioxidants and as a possible food and pharmaceutical supplement

Apoptotic properties of Citrus sudachi Hort, ex Shirai (Rutaceae) extract on human A549 and HepG2 cancer cells

Purpose: To investigate whether Citrus sudachi harvested at two stages of maturity can induce toxicity in a cell-specific manner and to determine the possible  mechanisms of Citrus sudachi-induced cytotoxic responses in two types of cancer cells (human lung adenocarcinoma A549 and hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells) and two normal cell lines (lung 16HBE140- and liver CHANG cells).Methods: 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and annexin V/propidium iodidle assay were used to test the antiproliferative activity and apoptosis of methanol extract of Citrus sudachi, respectively. Griess reaction and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were carried out to evaluate nitric oxide (NO•) production and the mRNA levels of inhibitors of apoptosis (IAP).Results: Citrus sudachi exerted cytotoxicity in a time-dependent manner in cancer cells which increased with increase in maturity but did not affect normal cells. Citrus sudachi was found to induce accumulation of cells in the sub-G1 cell cycle phase, fragmentation of DNA and cell death with characteristics of apoptosis, in both types of cancer cells. Moreover, Citrus sudachi upregulated cellular NO• produced by activation of nitric oxide synthase (NOS), while it suppressed the levels of IAP mRNA in both types of cancer cells.Conclusion: The results obtained suggest that Citrus sudachi induces apoptosis in A549 and HepG2 cells, which may be mediated by NO•. There is need for further studies on the role of Citrus sudachi in cancer treatment.Keywords: Apoptosis, Citrus sudachi, Human lung and liver cancer cells, Inhibitors of apoptosis, Nitric oxid

Effect of dose and dosing rate on the mutagenesis of nitric oxide in supF shuttle vector

Purpose: To determine how the dose and rate of NO• treatment affects mutagenic responses.Methods: Shuttle vector pSP189 was used to determine the genotoxicity resulting from in vitro exposure to NO• using three delivery methods (reactor and Transwell co-culture systems, and NO• donor sodium nitroprusside), followed by plasmid replication in bacteria MBL50 and human AD293 cells.Results: When exposed to preformed 100% NO• for 3 h or 1% NO• for 35 h using a reactor system, a cumulative dose of 1260 μM × min reduced AD293 cell viability by 46 and 18% and increased mutation frequencies (MFs) 1.9- and 5.3-fold higher than argon control, respectively. Roughly 5-fold increase in MF of the supF gene of AD293 cells co-cultivated with macrophages stimulated with IFN-γ/LPS was also observed. When AD293 cells were treated by SNP, DNA strand breaks were induced and MFs were increased in a dose-dependent manner.Conclusion: These results provide important clues to how dose and dosing rate of introducing NO• may contribute to potential genotoxicity resulting from NO• formation in vivo.Keywords: AD293 cells, Delivery method, Genotoxicity, Nitric oxide, supF Gene of pSP189 shuttle vecto

Effect of extraction solvents on antioxidant and skin-whitening potentials of defatted Camellia seed cakes

Defatted Camellia japonica L. seed cake is an important byproduct during the manufacture of Camellia seed oil. The present study evaluated the influence of two extraction solvents on the total contents of phenol and flavonoid, antioxidant activity and skin-whitening effect capable of inhibiting the biosynthesis of melanin of defatted Camellia seed cakes, a byproduct from Camellia oil production. The antioxidant capacities of 100% methanol and 70% ethanol extracts were analysed using radical scavenging (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl, O2-, H2O2 and NO), SOD-like, ferrous ion chelating and reducing power assays. The total phenolic and flavonoid contents were further determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu method. Moreover, intracellular antityrosinase activity and melanin contents were evaluated in human malignant melanoma cells (SK mel-100). Ethanol extracts of defatted Camellia seed cake extracts exhibited higher phenolic (4097 mg gallic acid equivalents/100 g) and flavonoid (2899 mg rutin equivalents/100 g) contents with higher superoxide (IC50 = 1.9 mg/mL), nitric oxide (IC50 =1.6 mg/mL) radical scavenging, ferrous ion chelating (IC50 = 2.9 mg/mL) and reducing power (IC50 = 1.8 mg/mL) activities than those of methanol. These ethanol extracts also evidenced more effective inhibitory activities of tyrosinase and melanin synthesis than methanol extracts. Therefore, the present results demonstrated that defatted Camellia seed cakes could be a valuable source of antioxidative and whitening ingredients, and ethanol was more efficient in extracting antioxidants and bioactive compounds than methanol

Andro-Simnet: Android Malware Family Classification Using Social Network Analysis

While the rapid adaptation of mobile devices changes our daily life more conveniently, the threat derived from malware is also increased. There are lots of research to detect malware to protect mobile devices, but most of them adopt only signature-based malware detection method that can be easily bypassed by polymorphic and metamorphic malware. To detect malware and its variants, it is essential to adopt behavior-based detection for efficient malware classification. This paper presents a system that classifies malware by using common behavioral characteristics along with malware families. We measure the similarity between malware families with carefully chosen features commonly appeared in the same family. With the proposed similarity measure, we can classify malware by malware's attack behavior pattern and tactical characteristics. Also, we apply a community detection algorithm to increase the modularity within each malware family network aggregation. To maintain high classification accuracy, we propose a process to derive the optimal weights of the selected features in the proposed similarity measure. During this process, we find out which features are significant for representing the similarity between malware samples. Finally, we provide an intuitive graph visualization of malware samples which is helpful to understand the distribution and likeness of the malware networks. In the experiment, the proposed system achieved 97% accuracy for malware classification and 95% accuracy for prediction by K-fold cross-validation using the real malware dataset.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, dataset link: http://ocslab.hksecurity.net/Datasets/andro-simnet , demo video: https://youtu.be/JmfS-ZtCbg4 , In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), 201

Phosphorylation of α-syntrophin is responsible for its subcellular localization and interaction with dystrophin in muscle cells

Syntrophin is a well-known adaptor protein that links intracellular proteins with the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC) at the sarcolemma. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism that regulates the intracellular localization of α-syntrophin and its interaction with dystrophin. In this study, we demonstrate that α-syntrophin phosphorylation determines its intracellular localization and interaction with dystrophin in muscle cells. α-Syntrophin, a predominant isoform in skeletal muscles, directly interacts with ion channels, enzymes, receptors, and DGC proteins. Despite α-syntrophin being a potential signaling molecule, most studies focus on its function as a dystrophin-associated protein. However, we previously reported that α-syntrophin has a variety of DGC-independent functions to modulate cell migration, differentiation, survival, and protein stability. According to the results of the in vitro phosphorylation assays using subcellular fractions, the phosphorylated α-syntrophin accumulated only at the plasma membrane, and this event occurred regardless of dystrophin expression. However, the α-syntrophin interacting with dystrophin at the membrane was not in a phosphorylated state. We also identified that protein kinase C (PKC) was involved in the phosphorylation of α-syntrophin, which restricted α-syntrophin to interact with dystrophin. In conclusion, we demonstrate that the phosphorylation of α-syntrophin by PKC regulates its intracellular localization and interaction with dystrophin

Phosphorylation of α-syntrophin is responsible for its subcellular localization and interaction with dystrophin in muscle cells

79-85Syntrophin is a well-known adaptor protein that links intracellular proteins with the dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC) at the sarcolemma. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism that regulates the intracellular localization of α-syntrophin and its interaction with dystrophin. In this study, we demonstrate that α-syntrophin phosphorylation determines its intracellular localization and interaction with dystrophin in muscle cells. α-Syntrophin, a predominant isoform in skeletal muscles, directly interacts with ion channels, enzymes, receptors, and DGC proteins. Despite α-syntrophin being a potential signaling molecule, most studies focus on its function as a dystrophin-associated protein. However, we previously reported that α-syntrophin has a variety of DGC-independent functions to modulate cell migration, differentiation, survival, and protein stability. According to the results of the in vitro phosphorylation assays using subcellular fractions, the phosphorylated α-syntrophin accumulated only at the plasma membrane, and this event occurred regardless of dystrophin expression. However, the α-syntrophin interacting with dystrophin at the membrane was not in a phosphorylated state. We also identified that protein kinase C (PKC) was involved in the phosphorylation of α-syntrophin, which restricted α-syntrophin to interact with dystrophin. In conclusion, we demonstrate that the phosphorylation of α-syntrophin by PKC regulates its intracellular localization and interaction with dystrophin

Factors Influencing Parental Satisfaction of Mothers with Preschool Children

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to identify degrees of parenting stress, parenting efficacy, parenting behavior and parental satisfaction, and to identify factors influencing parenting satisfaction of mothers who had preschool children. METHODS: The research participants were 176 mothers. All of mothers had preschool children, aged 2 to 6 years old, and attended one of 3 day care centers or 2 Kindergartens located in J city. Data were collected by convenience sampling using self-report questionnaires which contained items on general characteristics, parenting stress, parenting efficacy, parenting behavior, and parenting satisfaction. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, correlation, and multiple regression. RESULTS: The average level of parenting satisfaction of mothers with preschool children was 5.38±0.79. Positive parenting behavior and affective parenting efficacy were verified factors influencing parental satisfaction. These factors accounted for 41.4% of parental satisfaction. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that positive parenting behavior and affective parenting efficacy have the biggest impact on parental satisfaction. The results of this study provide the basic data for the development of parental education program aimed at improving parental satisfaction of mothers who have preschool children