Ancient Chinese medicine and mechanistic evidence of acupuncture physiology

Acupuncture has been widely used in China for three millennia as an art of healing. Yet, its physiology is not yet understood. The current interest in acupuncture started in 1971. Soon afterward, extensive research led to the concept of neural signaling with possible involvement of opioid peptides, glutamate, adenosine and identifying responsive parts in the central nervous system. In the last decade scientists began investigating the subject with anatomical and molecular imaging. It was found that mechanical movements of the needle, ignored in the past, appear to be central to the method and intracellular calcium ions may play a pivotal role. In this review, we trace the technique of clinical treatment from the first written record about 2,200 years ago to the modern time. The ancient texts have been used to introduce the concepts of yin, yang, qi, de qi, and meridians, the traditional foundation of acupuncture. We explore the sequence of the physiological process, from the turning of the needle, the mechanical wave activation of calcium ion channel to beta-endorphin secretion. By using modern terminology to re-interpret the ancient texts, we have found that the 2nd century b.c. physiologists were meticulous investigators and their explanation fits well with the mechanistic model derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and confocal microscopy. In conclusion, the ancient model appears to have withstood the test of time surprisingly well confirming the popular axiom that the old wine is better than the new

Effects of Aluminum Oxide Nanoparticles on the Growth, Development, and microRNA Expression of Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum)

Nanoparticles are a class of newly emerging environmental pollutions. To date, few experiments have been conducted to investigate the effect nanoparticles may have on plant growth and development. It is important to study the effects nanoparticles have on plants because they are stationary organisms that cannot move away from environmental stresses like animals can, therefore they must overcome these stresses by molecular routes such as altering gene expression. microRNAs (miRNA) are a newly discovered, endogenous class of post-transcriptional gene regulators that function to alter gene expression by either targeting mRNAs for degradation or inhibiting mRNAs translating into proteins. miRNAs have been shown to mediate abiotic stress responses such as drought and salinity in plants by altering gene expression, however no study has been performed on the effect of nanoparticles on the miRNA expression profile; therefore our aim in this study was to classify if certain miRNAs play a role in plant response to Al2O3 nanoparticle stress. In this study, we exposed tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants (an important cash crop as well as a model organism) to 0%, 0.1%, 0.5%, and 1% Al2O3 nanoparticles and found that as exposure to the nanoparticles increased, the average root length, the average biomass, and the leaf count of the seedlings significantly decreased. We also found that miR395, miR397, miR398, and miR399 showed an extreme increase in expression during exposure to 1% Al2O3 nanoparticles as compared to the other treatments and the control, therefore these miRNAs may play a key role in mediating plant stress responses to nanoparticle stress in the environment. The results of this study show that Al2O3 nanoparticles have a negative effect on the growth and development of tobacco seedlings and that miRNAs may play a role in the ability of plants to withstand stress to Al2O3 nanoparticles in the environment

Principal component analysis in studies of substituent-induced chemical shifts of 1,4-disubstituted benzenes

Chemometric analyses of 1,4-disubstituted benzene aromatic carbon atom NMR chemical shifts, bearing 14 substituents (X) within a complete series involving the same substituents as fixed groups (Y), are reported. The substituent effects of (i) strong electron donors (NMe2, NH2 and OMe), (ii) halogens (F, Cl and Sr), (iii) electron accepters (CFB, CN and NO2), (iv) accepters of the carbonyl type [C(O)OEt, C(O)Me and CHO] and (v) neutral groups (H and Me) were studied using principal component analysis (PCA). The charge alterations (Deltaq) induced by introducing a substituent X at C-l were also analyzed by the means of PCA of data obtained from theoretical calculations (AM1 method). The correlations among the substituent chemical shifts (SCS) and among the charge alterations (Deltaq) and the dependence of SCS on charge alterations were analyzed by regression analyses applied to the scores of the first principal components (PC1) obtained in the PCA of the SCS and Deltaq values. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.39631632