Antibacterial and Antioxidant Characteristics of Pigments and Coelomic Fluid of Sea Urchin, Echinodermata Mathaei Species, from the Persian Gulf

Background & Aims: Sea urchin immune responses are directly exposed to potentially pathogenic microorganisms and develop defence responses mainly based on immunocytes and humoral factors contained in the coelomic fluid. In addition, the polyhydroxylated 1, 4-naphthoquinone pigments are found to possess excellent antimicrobial, antialgal and antioxidant activities. The present research aimed to study the bioactive potentials (antioxidant, antibacterial and cytotoxic) of coelomic fluid and pigments shells and spines of sea urchin, Echinodermata mathaei species. Methods: The coelomic fluid and pigments shell and spine of sea urchin were isolated using buffered mode and hydrogen chloride (HCl), respectively. Then, antioxidant [reducing power, DPPH radical (1, 1-diphenyl 2-picryhydrazyl) scavenging, and total antioxidant capacity), antibacterial (minimum inhibitory concentration or MIC) and cytotoxic potentials were evaluated. Results: The free cells of the coelomic fluid had the highest activity in the all antioxidant methods, and the coelomocyte lysate had the highest antibacterial activity. All the differences were significant at the level of P < 0.05. Conclusion: The result of this research indicated that coelomic fluid and pigments shell and spine of sea urchin, Echinodermata mathaei species, have potent antioxidant activity and the ability for scavenging cytotoxic effects. This suggests that sea urchin shells and spines, most of which are discarded as waste after removal of gonads, would be a new bioresource for natural antioxidants. Keywords: Antioxidant, Antibacterial, Cytotoxic, Sea urchin, Echinometra mathae

An Experimental Proposal to Test Dynamic Quantum Non-locality with Single-Atom Interferometry

Quantum non-locality based on the well-known Bell inequality is of kinematic nature. A different type of quantum non-locality, the non-locality of the quantum equation of motion, is recently put forward with connection to the Aharonov-Bohm effect [Nature Phys. 6, 151 (2010)]. Evolution of the displacement operator provides an example to manifest such dynamic quantum non-locality. We propose an experiment using single-atom interferometry to test such dynamic quantum non-locality. We show how to measure evolution of the displacement operator with clod atoms in a spin-dependent optical lattice potential and discuss signature to identify dynamic quantum non-locality under a realistic experimental setting.Comment: 4 page

Notes on monotone Lindelöf property

summary:We provide a necessary and sufficient condition under which a generalized ordered topological product (GOTP) of two GO-spaces is monotonically Lindelöf

Analysis of interspecies adherence of oral bacteria using a membrane binding assay coupled with polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis profiling.

Information on co-adherence of different oral bacterial species is important for understanding interspecies interactions within oral microbial community. Current knowledge on this topic is heavily based on pariwise coaggregation of known, cultivable species. In this study, we employed a membrane binding assay coupled with polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) to systematically analyze the co-adherence profiles of oral bacterial species, and achieved a more profound knowledge beyond pairwise coaggregation. Two oral bacterial species were selected to serve as "bait": Fusobacterium nucleatum (F. nucleatum) whose ability to adhere to a multitude of oral bacterial species has been extensively studied for pairwise interactions and Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) whose interacting partners are largely unknown. To enable screening of interacting partner species within bacterial mixtures, cells of the "bait" oral bacterium were immobilized on nitrocellulose membranes which were washed and blocked to prevent unspecific binding. The "prey" bacterial mixtures (including known species or natural saliva samples) were added, unbound cells were washed off after the incubation period and the remaining cells were eluted using 0.2 mol x L(-1) glycine. Genomic DNA was extracted, subjected to 16S rRNA PCR amplification and separation of the resulting PCR products by DGGE. Selected bands were recovered from the gel, sequenced and identified via Nucleotide BLAST searches against different databases. While few bacterial species bound to S. mutans, consistent with previous findings F. nucleatum adhered to a variety of bacterial species including uncultivable and uncharacterized ones. This new approach can more effectively analyze the co-adherence profiles of oral bacteria, and could facilitate the systematic study of interbacterial binding of oral microbial species