The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of Lactobacillus plantarum MA2, an isolate from Chinese traditional Tibet kefir, on cholesterol-lowering and microflora of rat in vivo. Rats were fed on cholesterol-enriched experimental diet, supplemented with lyophilized L. plantarum MA2 powder, with a dose of 10(11) cells/day per mice. The results showed that L. plantarum MA2 feeding significantly lowered serum total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides level, while there was no change in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. In addition, liver total cholesterol and triglycerides was also decreased. However, fecal cholesterol and triglycerides was increased significantly (P < 0.05) in comparison with the control. Also, L. plantarum MA2 increased the population of lactic acid bacteria and bifidobacteria in the fecal, but it did not change the number of Escherichia coli as compared to control. Moreover, pH, moisture, and organic acids in the fecal were also measured. The present results indicate the probiotic potential of the L. plantarum MA2 strain in hypocholesterolemic effect and also increasing the probiotic count in the intestine.

To investigate the diversity of viral flora, we used metagenomics to study the viral communities in a pooled faecal sample of 27 diarrhoeic piglets from intensive commercial farms in China. The 15 distinct mammalian viruses identified in the pooled diarrhoeic sample were, in order of abundance of nucleic acid sequence, Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), sapovirus, porcine bocavirus-4 (PBoV-4), sapelovirus, torovirus, coronavirus, PBoV-2, stool-associated single-stranded DNA virus (poSCV), astrovirus (AstV), kobuvirus, posavirus-1, porcine enterovirus-9 (PEV-9), porcine circovirus-like (po-circo-like) virus, picobirnavirus (PBV) and Torque teno sus virus 2 (TTSuV-2). The prevalence rate of each virus was verified from diarrhoeic and healthy piglets by PCR assay. A mean of 5.5 different viruses were shed in diarrhoeic piglets, and one piglet was in fact coinfected with 11 different viruses. By contrast, healthy piglets shed a mean of 3.2 different viruses. Compared with samples from healthy piglets, the co-infection of PEDV and PBoV had a high prevalence rate in diarrhoea samples, suggesting a correlation with the appearance of diarrhoea in piglets. Furthermore, we report here for the first time the presence of several recently described viruses in China, and the identification of novel genotypes. Therefore, our investigation results provide an unbiased survey of viral communities and prevalence in faecal samples of piglets.

A fast algorithm with low memory usage is proposed to generate the hologram for full-color 3D display based on a compressed look-up table (C-LUT). The C-LUT is described and built to reduce the memory usage and speed up the calculation of the computer-generated hologram (CGH). Numerical simulations and optical experiments are performed to confirm this method, and several other algorithms are compared. The results show that the memory usage of the C-LUT is kept low when number of depth layers of the 3D object is increased, and the time for building the C-LUT is independent of the number of depth layers of the 3D object. The algorithm based on C-LUT is an efficient method for saving memory usage and calculation time, and it is expected that it could be used for realizing real-time and full-color 3D holographic display in the future.

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Diagnosing hematological disorders based on the separation and detection of cells in the patient's blood is a significant challenge. We have developed a novel barcode particle-based suspension array that can simultaneously capture and detect multiple types of blood cells. The barcode particles are polyacrylamide (PAAm) hydrogel inverse opal microcarriers with characteristic reflection peak codes that remain stable during cell capture on their surfaces. The hydrophilic PAAm hydrogel scaffolds of the barcode particles can entrap various plasma proteins to capture different cells in the blood, with little damage to captured cells.