No abstract

No abstract

Chinese three-striped box turtle (Cuora trifasciata), as a freshwater turtle, is used as a tonic food. The purpose of this study was to isolate peptides with cancer growth inhibition activity from trypsin-digested hydrolysates of turtle proteins. The results demonstrated that two fractions T1 and T2 exhibited good inhibition on HepG-2 and MCF-7 cancer cells, with an inhibition of 70.65-89.1%, at 500 μg/mL. Subsequently, three peptides were identified from T1 and T2, including RGVKGPR (T1-1), KLGPKGPR (T1-2), and SSPGPPVH (T2-1). By database search, T2-1 was a completely new peptide; its inhibition activity on MCF-7 cancer cells was the best, up to 70.02% at 500 μg/mL. Then, T1 and T2-1 were nanoencapsulated by chitosan. After nanoencapsulation, the inhibition percentages were 50.23% for the nanoencapsulated T1 on HepG-2 and 46.82% for the encapsulated T2-1 on MCF-7. The release experiment indicated that the encapsulated peptides could be slowly released in simulated gastrointestinal juice.

The risk of metabolic abnormalities in menopausal women increases significantly due to the decline in estrogen level. Nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (NRF2) is an important oxidative stress sensor that plays regulatory role in energy metabolism. Therefore, an ovariectomized menopausal model in Nrf2-knockout (KO) mice was applied to evaluate the effect of Nrf2 deficiency on metabolism in menopausal females. The mice were divided into four groups according to their genotypes and treatments. Blood samples and bodyweights were obtained preoperatively and in the first to ninth postoperative weeks after overnight fasting. Serum levels of triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (T-CHO), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and glucose (GLU) were measured at postoperative weeks 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) was analyzed in brain tissues after sacrifice at postoperative week 9. The results demonstrated that, compared with the corresponding wild-type (WT) mice, KO ovariectomized mice had a greater bodyweight gain (P<0.01). Serum analysis showed that the serum GLU, T-CHO, and TG were significantly lower (P<0.05) but LDL was significantly higher (P<0.05) in the KO control mice than that in WT control mice. However, different from the WT counterparts, an increase in blood GLU level (P<0.05), unchanged T-CHO, TG, and HDL levels, and a significant reduction in LDL (P<0.01) was found in the KO ovariectomized mice. In addition, the level of 5-HT was significantly reduced (P<0.05) in the KO mice after ovariectomy. In conclusion, the combination of Nrf2 deletion and a decline in estrogen level induced a significant increase in bodyweight, which may be associated with their altered glucose and LDL metabolism and decreased 5-HT levels. From a clinical perspective, women with antioxidant defense deficiency may have an increased risk of metabolic abnormalities after menopause. Competing interests:The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.serum MDA levels increased in the WT-OVX and KO-CON groups, but decreased in the KO-OVX group, though no statistical significance was reached yet (Fig 2). Body weight changes in different groups of miceBody weight curves prepared by weighing each group of mice weekly showed that weight gain occurred in the WT-OVX and KO-OVX groups relative to the WT-CON and KO-CON groups (Fig 3b). No significant difference of the weight gain rate was found between the WT-CON and KO-CON groups, but OVX groups had increased weight compared to the counterpart CON groups (Fig 3b and 3a, P < 0.05 and P < 0.01). By calculating the rate of weight gain from the preoperative time to postoperative week 9 in different groups, we found that the weight gain rates of the KO-OVX was significantly higher than that in the corresponding KO-CON and WT-CON groups after postoperative week 4 (Fig 3b), and the weight gain rate of KO-OVX was the greatest and was significantly different from the WT-CON and KO-CON group (WT-CON 6.02% ± 2.95%, WT-OVX 18.55% ...

A complex unit gain graph (or T-gain graph) is a triple Φ = (G, T, ϕ) ((G, ϕ) for short) consisting of a graph G as the underlying graph of (G, ϕ), T = {z ∈ C : |z| = 1} is a subgroup of the multiplicative group of all nonzero complex numbers C × and a gain function ϕ :− → E → T such that ϕ(e ij ) = ϕ(e ji ) −1 = ϕ(e ji ). In this paper, we investigate the relation among the rank, the independence number and the cyclomatic number of a complex unit gain graph (G, ϕ) with order n, and prove that 2n − 2c(G) ≤ r(G, ϕ) + 2α(G) ≤ 2n. Where r(G, ϕ), α(G) and c(G) are the rank of the Hermitian adjacency matrix A(G, ϕ), the independence number and the cyclomatic number of G, respectively. Furthermore, the properties of the complex unit gain graph that reaching the lower bound are characterized.