Anti-inflammatory effects of essential oil, aerial parts and hairy roots extracts of Nepeta pogonosperma on rat brain mixed cells

Background and objectives: Many Nepeta species have been commonly used in Iranian folk medicine as tranquilizer, relaxant, carminative and restorative tonic for nervous and respiratory disorders. Inflammation is a problem in many diseases and has an important role in brain function that can cause neurodegenerative disorders. Inflamed glial cells can exacerbate neurodegenerative diseases by producing neurotoxins. In the present study, the anti-inflammatory effects of essential oil, aerial parts and hairy roots extracts of Nepeta pogonosperma Jamzad & Assadi have been evaluated on rat brain mixed cells. Methods: Inflamed mixed glial cells from rats’ brains were treated with different concentrations of essential oil and extracts from aerial parts and hairy roots of Nepeta pogonosperma to evaluate their anti-inflammatory effects. No level as the indicator for inflammation was measured. Results: The results revealed that 0.5 µL/mL of the essential oil reduced NO production significantly. In addition, some hairy root extract concentrations led to reduce it, although the extract of the aerial parts of the plant did not affect NO production. Conclusion: This research has confirmed the anti-inflammatory potential of essential oil and hairy root extract of Nepeta pogonosperma on rat brain mixed cells

Analysis of the Conformational Landscape of the N-Domains of the AAA ATPase p97: Disentangling the Continuous Conformational Variability in Partially Symmetrical Complexes

International audienceSingle-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has been shown to be effective in defining the structure of macromolecules, including protein complexes. Complexes adopt different conformations and compositions to perform their biological functions. In cryo-EM, the protein complexes are observed in solution, enabling the recording of images of the protein in multiple conformations. Various methods exist for capturing the conformational variability through analysis of cryo-EM data. Here, we analyzed the conformational variability in the hexameric AAA + ATPase p97, a complex with a six-fold rotational symmetric core surrounded by six flexible N-domains. We compared the performance of discrete classification methods with our recently developed method, MDSPACE, which uses 3D-to-2D flexible fitting of an atomic structure to images based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Our analysis detected a novel conformation adopted by approximately 2% of the particles in the dataset and determined that the N-domains of p97 sway by up to 60° around a central position. This study demonstrates the application of MDSPACE in analyzing the continuous conformational changes in partially symmetrical protein complexes, systems notoriously difficult to analyze due to the alignment errors caused by their partial symmetry