An exotic fruit with high nutritional value: Kadsura coccinea fruit

This research was to determine nutritional composition, essential and toxic elemental content, and major phenolic acid with antioxidant activity in Kadsura coccinea fruit. The results indicated that Kadsura coccinea fruit exhibited the high contents of total protein, total fat, ash and essential elements such as calcium (Ca), ferrum (Fe) and phosphorus (P). The levels of four common toxic elements, i.e. cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), arsenic (As) and lead (Pb), were lower than legal limits. By high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis, gallic acid was identified as major phenolic acid in peel and pulp tissues. Its contents were no significant difference in both tissues. In comparison with two commercial antioxidants, the major phenolic acid extracted from Kadsura coccinea exhibited stronger 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical-scavenging activity and reducing power. Kadsura coccinea fruit is a good source of nutrition and natural antioxidant. It is worthwhile to popularize this exotic fruit around the world

The pervasive role of biological cohesion in bedform development

Sediment fluxes in aquatic environments are crucially dependent on bedform dynamics. However, sediment-flux predictions rely almost completely on clean-sand studies, despite most environments being composed of mixtures of non-cohesive sands, physically cohesive muds and biologically cohesive extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) generated by microorganisms. EPS associated with surficial biofilms are known to stabilize sediment and increase erosion thresholds. Here we present experimental data showing that the pervasive distribution of low levels of EPS throughout the sediment, rather than the high surficial levels of EPS in biofilms, is the key control on bedform dynamics. The development time for bedforms increases by up to two orders of magnitude for extremely small quantities of pervasively distributed EPS. This effect is far stronger than for physical cohesion, because EPS inhibit sand grains from moving independently. The results highlight that present bedform predictors are overly simplistic, and the associated sediment transport processes require re-assessment for the influence of EPS

High Proportion of 22q13 Deletions and SHANK3 Mutations in Chinese Patients with Intellectual Disability

Intellectual disability (ID) is a heterogeneous disorder caused by chromosomal abnormalities, monogenic factors and environmental factors. 22q13 deletion syndrome is a genetic disorder characterized by severe ID. Although the frequency of 22q13 deletions in ID is unclear, it is believed to be largely underestimated. To address this issue, we used Affymetrix Human SNP 6.0 array to detect the 22q13 deletions in 234 Chinese unexplained ID patients and 103 controls. After the Quality Control (QC) test of raw data, 22q13 deletions were found in four out of 230 cases (1.7%), while absent in parents of the cases and 101 controls. A review of genome-wide microarray studies in ID was performed and the frequency of 22q13 deletions from the literatures was 0.24%, much lower than our report. The overlapping region shared by all 4 cases encompasses the gene SHANK3. A heterozygous de novo nonsense mutation Y1015X of SHANK3 was identified in one ID patient. Cortical neurons were prepared from embryonic mice and were transfected with a control plasmid, shank3 wild-type (WT) or mutant plasmids. Overexpression of the Y1015 mutant in neurons significantly affected neurite outgrowth compared with shank3 WT. These findings suggest that 22q13 deletions may be a more frequent cause for Chinese ID patients than previously thought, and the SHANK3 gene is involved in the neurite development