Four new phenolic glycosides from Baoyuan decoction

AbstractFour new phenolic glycosides, including two flavonoid glycosides (1 and 2) and two lignan glycosides (3 and 4), were isolated from the traditional Chinese medicine formula, Baoyuan decoction. Their structures were established by detailed analysis of the NMR and HR-ESI-MS spectroscopic data and their absolute configurations were determined by the experimental electronic circular dichroism data as well as chemical methods. Furthermore, the sources of the four new compounds were determined by the UPLC-Q-trap-MS method, which proved that 1 and 2 are originated from Glycyrrhiza uralensis, and 3 and 4 are from Cinnamomum cassia

Neural-IMLS: Self-supervised Implicit Moving Least-Squares Network for Surface Reconstruction

Surface reconstruction is very challenging when the input point clouds, particularly real scans, are noisy and lack normals. Observing that the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and the implicit moving least-square function (IMLS) provide a dual representation of the underlying surface, we introduce Neural-IMLS, a novel approach that directly learns the noise-resistant signed distance function (SDF) from unoriented raw point clouds in a self-supervised fashion. We use the IMLS to regularize the distance values reported by the MLP while using the MLP to regularize the normals of the data points for running the IMLS. We also prove that at the convergence, our neural network, benefiting from the mutual learning mechanism between the MLP and the IMLS, produces a faithful SDF whose zero-level set approximates the underlying surface. We conducted extensive experiments on various benchmarks, including synthetic scans and real scans. The experimental results show that {\em Neural-IMLS} can reconstruct faithful shapes on various benchmarks with noise and missing parts. The source code can be found at~\url{https://github.com/bearprin/Neural-IMLS}

1002. Cistanche deserticola: Orobanchaceae

Cistanche deserticola Ma is illustrated and described. This species is native to China where it has long been valued and used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is now cultivated extensively for trade. The species is confused easily with closely related species such as Cistanche salsa (C.A. Mey.) Beck. Bract and vascular bundle morphology, and habit, have been used traditionally to discriminate these taxa, which we discuss. Cistanche deserticola and its relatives may have significant global potential as ancillary crops that could be grown with shelter forests planted to halt land degradation

Salinity stress induces the production of 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones and regulates novel classes of responsive genes involved in signal transduction in Aquilaria sinensis calli

Gene ontology (GO) functional enrichment analysis of assembled unigenes. A total of 53514 matched unigenes were classfied into three principal categories: biological process, cellular component and molecular function. (PPTX 165 kb

Design of a multi-epitope vaccine against Haemophilus parasuis based on pan-genome and immunoinformatics approaches

BackgroundGlässer's disease, caused by Haemophilus parasuis (HPS), is responsible for economic losses in the pig industry worldwide. However, the existing commercial vaccines offer poor protection and there are significant barriers to the development of effective vaccines.MethodsIn the current study, we aimed to identify potential vaccine candidates and design a multi-epitope vaccine against HPS by performing pan-genomic analysis of 121 strains and using a reverse vaccinology approach.ResultsThe designed vaccine constructs consist of predicted epitopes of B and T cells derived from the outer membrane proteins of the HPS core genome. The vaccine was found to be highly immunogenic, non-toxic, and non-allergenic as well as have stable physicochemical properties. It has a high binding affinity to Toll-like receptor 2. In addition, in silico immune simulation results showed that the vaccine elicited an effective immune response. Moreover, the mouse polyclonal antibody obtained by immunizing the vaccine protein can be combined with different serotypes and non-typable Haemophilus parasuis in vitro.ConclusionThe overall results of the study suggest that the designed multi-epitope vaccine is a promising candidate for pan-prophylaxis against different strains of HPS

Extracts of Cistanche deserticola

The senescence accelerated mouse prone 8 substrain (SAM-P8), widely accepted as an animal model for studying aging and antiaging drugs, was used to examine the effects of dietary supplementation with extracts of Cistanche deserticola (ECD) which has been used extensively in traditional Chinese medicine because of its perceived ability to promote immune function in the elderly. Eight-month-old male SAM-P8 mice were treated with ECD by daily oral administrations for 4 weeks. The results showed that dietary supplementation of 150 mg/kg and 450 mg/kg of ECD could extend the life span measured by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis in dose-dependent manner. Dietary supplementation of SAM-P8 mice for 4 weeks with 100, 500, and 2500 mg/kg of ECD was shown to result in significant increases in both naive T and natural killer cells in blood and spleen cell populations. In contrast, peripheral memory T cells and proinflammatory cytokine, IL-6 in serum, were substantially decreased in the mice that ingested 100 and 500 mg/kg of ECD daily. Additionally, Sca-1 positive cells, the recognized progenitors of peripheral naive T cells, were restored in parallel. Our results provide clear experimental support for long standing clinical observational studies showing that Cistanche deserticola possesses significant effects in extending life span and suggest this is achieved by antagonizing immunosenescence

Antidepressant-Like Effects of Cistanche tubulosa Extract on Chronic Unpredictable Stress Rats Through Restoration of Gut Microbiota Homeostasis

Growing evidence shows that neuropsychiatric disorders, such as depression, are linked with gut microbiome through the gut–brain axis. Cistanches Herba is well known for the treatment of “kidney-yang” deficiency in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and has been used for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in recent years. In this study, chronic unpredictable stress (CUS)-induced depression model was established to explore the impact of Cistanche tubulosa extract (CTE) on behavioral tests, monoamine neurotransmitters and neurotrophic factors in hippocampus and colon, gut microbiota composition, and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) production. Moreover, correlation analysis was used to evaluate the functional relationship between altered gut microbiota, changed neurotransmitters and neurotrophins in hippocampus and colon, and disturbed concentration of SCFAs. CTE significantly improved depression-like behaviors in rats under CUS. Brain level of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression in CUS rats were restored by CTE. The relative abundance of gut microbiota and the concentrations of acetate and hexanoic acid could also be modulated by CTE treatment. We further showed that the application of CTE in CUS rats led to strong correlation among disrupted gut microbiota composition, hippocampus neurotransmitter levels, and production of neuroactive metabolite SCFAs. Altogether, these results identify CTE as a potential treatment for depressive symptoms by restoring homeostasis of gut microbiota for microbiota–gut–brain axis disorders, opening new avenues in the field of neuropsychopharmacology