No abstract

Studies on peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)-γ ligands have been focused on agonists. However, PPARγ activation may induce obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), one of the most challenging medical conditions. Here, we identified that isorhamnetin, a naturally occurring compound in fruits and vegetables and the metabolite of quercetin, is a novel antagonist of PPARγ. Isorhamnetin treatment inhibited the adipocyte differentiation induced by the PPARγ agonist rosiglitazone, reduced obesity development and ameliorated hepatic steatosis induced by both high-fat diet treatment and leptin deficiency. Our results suggest that dietary supplement of isorhamnetin may be beneficial to prevent obesity and steatosis and PPARγ antagonists may be useful to treat hepatic steatosis.

No abstract

Coaxial-electrospinning (ES) was used as a new method to fabricate one-dimensional (1D) confinements for studying confined crystallization of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). A series of core-sheath ultrafine fibers with PEG as the core and cellulose acetate as the sheath were obtained by coaxial ES. It was found that the uniform core-sheath ultrafine fibers could be fabricated and a (1D) confinement environment, a nanotube with a diameter from 68 to 860 nm, could be obtained by coaxial-ES. When the confinement dimension decreased to be smaller than 120 nm in diameter, the melt temperature (T m ), the crystallization temperature (T c ), the crystallinity (X m ), and the crystal sizes of the PEG were much smaller than those of bulk PEG and when the nanotube was larger than 200 nm in diameter, the T m , T c , X m , and the crystallite sizes of the PEG were close to those of bulk PEG, which suggested that the crystallization of the PEG was influenced by the confinement dimension.