BackgroundChemicals of herbal products may cause unexpected toxicity or adverse effect by the potential for alteration of the activity of CYP450 when co-administered with other drugs. Eleutherococcus senticosus (ES), has been widely used as a traditional herbal medicine and popular herbal dietary supplements, and often co-administered with many other drugs. The main bioactive constituents of ES were considered to be eleutherosides including eleutheroside B (EB) and eleutheroside E (EE). This study was to investigate the effects of EB and EE on CYP2C9, CYP2D6, CYP2E1 and CYP3A4 in rat liver microsomes in vitro.MethodProbe drugs of tolbutamide (TB), dextromethorphan (DM), chlorzoxazone (CLZ) and testosterone (TS) as well as eleutherosides of different concentrations were added to incubation systems of rat liver microsomes in vitro. After incubation, validated HPLC methods were used to quantify relevant metabolites.ResultsThe results suggested that EB and EE exhibited weak inhibition against the activity of CYP2C9 and CYP2E1, but no effects on CYP2D6 and CYP3A4 activity. The IC50 values for EB and EE were calculated to be 193.20 μM and 188.36 μM for CYP2E1, 595.66 μM and 261.82 μM for CYP2C9, respectively. Kinetic analysis showed that inhibitions of CYP2E1 by EB and EE were best fit to mixed-type with Ki value of 183.95 μM and 171.63 μM, respectively.ConclusionsThese results indicate that EB and EE may inhibit the metabolism of drugs metabolized via CYP2C9 and CYP2E1, and have the potential to increase the toxicity of the drugs.

The Hsf gene family, one of the most important transcription factor families, plays crucial roles in regulating heat resistance. However, a systematic and comprehensive analysis of this gene family has not been reported in Chinese cabbage. Therefore, systematic analysis of the Hsf gene family in Chinese cabbage has profound significance. In this study, 35 BrHsf genes were identified from Chinese cabbage, which could be classified into three groups according to their structural characteristics and phylogenetic comparisons with Arabidopsis and rice. Thirty-three BrHsf genes mapped on chromosomes were further assigned to three subgenomes and eight ancestral karyotypes. Distribution mapping showed that BrHsf genes were non-randomly localized on chromosomes. Chinese cabbage and Arabidopsis shared 22 orthologous gene pairs. The expansion of BrHsf genes mainly resulted from genome triplication. Comparative analysis showed that the most Hsf genes were in Chinese cabbage among the five species analyzed. Interestingly, the number of Hsf genes of heat-resistant plants (Theobroma cacao and Musa acuminata) was fewer than that in Chinese cabbage. The expression patterns of BrHsf genes were different in six tissues, based on RNA-seq. Quantitative real-time-PCR analysis showed that the expression level of BrHsf genes varied under various abiotic stresses. In conclusion, this comprehensive analysis of BrHsf genes will provide rich resources, aiding the determination of Hsfs functions in plant heat resistance. Furthermore, the comparative genomics analysis deepened our understanding of Hsf genes' evolution accompanied by the polyploidy event of Chinese cabbage.

BackgroundNon-heading Chinese cabbage (NHCC, Brassica rapa ssp. chinensis) is an important leaf vegetable grown worldwide. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying tolerance for extreme temperature in NHCC. The limited availability of NHCC genomic information has greatly hindered functional analysis and molecular breeding.ResultsHere, we conduct comprehensive analyses of cold and heat treatments in NHCC using RNA-seq. Approximately 790 million paired-end reads representing 136,189 unigenes with N50 length of 1705 bp were obtained. Totally, 14,329 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected. Among which, 10 DEGs were detected in all treatments, including 7 up-regulated and 3 down-regulated. The enrichment analyses showed 25 and 33 genes were enriched under cold and heat treatments, respectively. Additionally, 10,001 LncRNAs were identified, and 9,687 belonged to novel LncRNAs. The expression of miRNAs were more than that of pri-miRNAs and LncRNAs. Furthermore, we constructed a coexpression network for LncRNAs and miRNAs. It showed 67 and 192 genes were regulated by LncRNAs under cold and heat treatments, respectively. We constructed the flowchart for identifying LncRNAs of NHCC using transcriptome. Except conducting the de novo transcriptome analyses, we also compared these unigenes with the Chinese cabbage proteins. We identified several most important genes, and discussed their regulatory networks and crosstalk in cold and heat stresses.ConclusionsWe presented the first comprehensive characterization for NHCC crops and constructed the flowchart for identifying LncRNAs using transcriptome. Therefore, this study represents a fully characterized NHCC transcriptome, and provides a valuable resource for genetic and genomic studies under abiotic stress.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-016-2625-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

No abstract

In plants, flowering is the most important transition from vegetative to reproductive growth. The flowering patterns of monocots and eudicots are distinctly different, but few studies have described the evolutionary patterns of the flowering genes in them. In this study, we analysed the evolutionary pattern, duplication and expression level of these genes. The main results were as follows: (i) characterization of flowering genes in monocots and eudicots, including the identification of family-specific, orthologous and collinear genes; (ii) full characterization of CONSTANS-like genes in Brassica rapa (BraCOL genes), the key flowering genes; (iii) exploration of the evolution of COL genes in plant kingdom and construction of the evolutionary pattern of COL genes; (iv) comparative analysis of CO and FT genes between Brassicaceae and Grass, which identified several family-specific amino acids, and revealed that CO and FT protein structures were similar in B. rapa and Arabidopsis but different in rice; and (v) expression analysis of photoperiod pathway-related genes in B. rapa under different photoperiod treatments by RT-qPCR. This analysis will provide resources for understanding the flowering mechanisms and evolutionary pattern of COL genes. In addition, this genome-wide comparative study of COL genes may also provide clues for evolution of other flowering genes.