Variation of productivity and nutritive values of oat (Avena sativa) with geographical locations in Gansu Province of Northwest China under irrigation and fertilization conditions

Field experiments were conducted in low, medium and high sites; Jingqianghe, Huangzangsi and Lanzhou areas of Gansu Province, China from 2000 to 2001 to investigate the effects of geographicallocations on herbage dry matter (DM) yield and nutritive values of oat. It was found that the plant growing in Jingqianghe area yielded the highest forages (16046.0 DM/hm2) at high accumulation rate(300 kg ha-1d-1) and within long growing season (120 d), the plant growing in Huazangsi area produced medium quantity of forages (13020.3 DM/hm2) at low accumulation rate (200 kg ha-1d-1) but within long growing season (120 d), and the plant growing in Lanzhou area had the lowest forage yield (12505.7 kg DM/hm2) at relatively high accumulation rate (270 kg ha-1d-1) but within extremely short growing season (50 d). The highest seed production of 3789.3 kg DM/hm2 annually was observed in Huangzangsi area, the lowest seed production of 933.7 kg DM/hm2 annually was found in Jingqianghearea, and the medium seed production of 1632.7 kg DM/hm2 annually was recorded in Lanzhou area. The plant growing in high site of Jinqianghe area concentrated more (P 0.05) in in sacco degradability (ISD) of the plant among different growing sites was observed in the whole growing season. It was concluded from this study forage productionshould be conducted in high site of Jingqianghe area and seed production of oat should be conducted in low site of Lanzhou area with enough water and fertilizer supply

A study on the extraction and purification technology of tea sapogenin

In order to extract and purify tea sapogenin, first the extraction liquid is obtained using mechanically pressed tea-seeds as raw material, which will be decreased by organic solvent. When the conditions like the methanol volume fraction is 75v/v, solid-liquid is 1:4 and the ultrasonic frequency is 25.8 Hz, extract them for 30 min. After this, collect the extraction liquid and slowly add in Hz-841 macroporous resin column, then elute it with 0.3% NaOH. The third step is to elute with ethanol of different concentrations after the coloring pigment is got rid of, and then detect it with thin layer chromatography (TLC). It is discovered that there is only tea sapogenin in the 35 – 95v/v ethanol elution liquid. The last step is to collect the 95% ethanol elution liquid and vacuum condense it; and then tea-Tea sapogenin with a purity of 96% can be obtained

Breakdown of the interlayer coherence in twisted bilayer graphene

Coherent motion of the electrons in the Bloch states is one of the fundamental concepts of the charge conduction in solid state physics. In layered materials, however, such a condition often breaks down for the interlayer conduction, when the interlayer coupling is significantly reduced by e.g. large interlayer separation. We report that complete suppression of coherent conduction is realized even in an atomic length scale of layer separation in twisted bilayer graphene. The interlayer resistivity of twisted bilayer graphene is much higher than the c-axis resistivity of Bernal-stacked graphite, and exhibits strong dependence on temperature as well as on external electric fields. These results suggest that the graphene layers are significantly decoupled by rotation and incoherent conduction is a main transport channel between the layers of twisted bilayer graphene.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Dependence of the decoherence of polarization states in phase-damping channels on the frequency spectrum envelope of photons

We consider the decoherence of photons suffering in phase-damping channels. By exploring the evolutions of single-photon polarization states and two-photon polarization-entangled states, we find that different frequency spectrum envelopes of photons induce different decoherence processes. A white frequency spectrum can lead the decoherence to an ideal Markovian process. Some color frequency spectrums can induce asymptotical decoherence, while, some other color frequency spectrums can make coherence vanish periodically with variable revival amplitudes. These behaviors result from the non-Markovian effects on the decoherence process, which may give rise to a revival of coherence after complete decoherence.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, new results added, replaced by accepted versio

Alpha-lipoic acid induces apoptosis in hepatoma cells via the PTEN/Akt pathway

AbstractWe report here that alpha-lipoic acid (α-LA), a naturally-occurring antioxidant, scavenges reactive oxygen species (ROS) followed by an increase in apoptosis of human hepatoma cells. Apoptosis induced by α-LA was dependent upon the activation of the caspase cascade and the mitochondrial death pathway. α-LA induced increases in caspase-9 and caspase-3 but had no significant effect on caspase-8 activity. Apoptosis induced by α-LA was found to be mediated through the tensin homologue deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN)/Akt pathway. Prior to cell apoptosis, PTEN was activated and its downstream target Akt was inhibited. Our findings indicate that increasing ROS scavenging could be a therapeutic strategy to treat cancer

The role of cellular oxidative stress in regulating glycolysis energy metabolism in hepatoma cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Warburg effect has been found in a wide spectrum of human cancers, however the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. This study aims to explore the role of cellular oxidative stress in relation to glycolysis and the Warburg effect in hepatoma cells.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Various cell lines combining environmental hypoxia was used as an in vitro model to mimic tumor microenvironment in vivo. Superoxide dismutases (SOD) and xanthine oxidase (XO) gene transfection were used to produce various cellular redox levels. 2',7'-dichlorofluorescin (DCF) fluorescence and ESR spectrum were used to detect cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that endogenous or exogenous interference with the cellular oxidative stress can sensitively regulate glycolysis and the Warburg effect in hepatoma cells. Hepatoma cells displayed a high level of free radicals compared to immortalized normal hepatocyte cells. Increasing the level of ROS stress in hepatoma cells can directly upregulate HIF-1 and activate glycolysis without requirement of a hypoxic condition. This explains the mechanism whereby aerobic glycolysis, i.e. the Warburg effect arises. Either endogenously upregulating SOD or exogenously administration with antioxidant can, through downregulating ROS level, effectively regulate energy pathways in hepatoma cells and can inhibit the growth of tumor cells and xenograft tumors.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study suggests that the Warburg effect was related to an inherently high level of cellular ROS and HIF-1. Hepatoma cells adaptation to hypoxia for survival and rapid growth exploits oxidative stress ectopically activated glycolysis to compensate the energy supply. This specific mechanism in which tumor cells through cellular oxidative stress activate glycolysis to meet their energy metabolism requirement could be exploited to selectively kill tumor cells.</p

Developing a Robust Computable Phenotype Definition Workflow to Describe Health and Disease in Observational Health Research

Health informatics can inform decisions that practitioners, patients, policymakers, and researchers need to make about health and disease. Health informatics is built upon patient health data leading to the need to codify patient health information. Such standardization is required to compute population statistics (such as prevalence, incidence, etc.) that are common metrics used in fields such as epidemiology. Reliable decision-making about health and disease rests on our ability to organize, analyze, and assess data repositories that contain patient health data. While standards exist to structure and analyze patient data across patient data sources such as health information exchanges, clinical data repositories, and health data marketplaces, analogous best practices for rigorously defining patient populations in health informatics contexts do not exist. Codifying best practices for developing disease definitions could support the effective development of clinical guidelines, inform algorithms used in clinical decision support systems, and additional patient guidelines. In this paper, we present a workflow for the development of phenotype definitions. This workflow presents a series of recommendations for defining health and disease. Various examples within this paper are presented to demonstrate this workflow in health informatics contexts.Comment: IEEE Computer Based Medical Systems Conferenc

Grp94 Protein Delivers γ-Aminobutyric Acid Type A (GABAA) Receptors to Hrd1 Protein-mediated Endoplasmic Reticulum-associated Degradation

This research was originally published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Xiao-Jing Di, Ya-Juan Wang, Dong-Yun Han, Yan-Lin Fu, Adam S. Duerfeldt, Brian S. J. Blagg and Ting-Wei Mu.Grp94 Protein Delivers γ-Aminobutyric Acid Type A (GABAA) Receptors to Hrd1 Protein-mediated Endoplasmic Reticulum-associated Degradation. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 2016; 291, 9526-9539.Proteostasis maintenance of γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA) receptors dictates their function in controlling neuronal inhibition in mammalian central nervous systems. However, as a multisubunit, multispan, integral membrane protein, even wild type subunits of GABAA receptors fold and assemble inefficiently in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Unassembled and misfolded subunits undergo ER-associated degradation (ERAD), but this degradation process remains poorly understood for GABAA receptors. Here, using the α1 subunits of GABAA receptors as a model substrate, we demonstrated that Grp94, a metazoan-specific Hsp90 in the ER lumen, uses its middle domain to interact with the α1 subunits and positively regulates their ERAD. OS-9, an ER-resident lectin, acts downstream of Grp94 to further recognize misfolded α1 subunits in a glycan-dependent manner. This delivers misfolded α1 subunits to the Hrd1-mediated ubiquitination and the valosin-containing protein-mediated extraction pathway. Repressing the initial ERAD recognition step by inhibiting Grp94 enhances the functional surface expression of misfolding-prone α1(A322D) subunits, which causes autosomal dominant juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. This study clarifies a Grp94-mediated ERAD pathway for GABAA receptors, which provides a novel way to finely tune their function in physiological and pathophysiological conditions