Eubacterium lentum WYH-1 was able to efficiently decompose the oxalate in foods.

Near-ultraviolet light (UVA: 320-400 nm) constitutes a major part of sunlight UV. It is important to know the effect of UVA on the biological activities of organisms on the earth. We have previously reported that black light induces somatic-cell mutation in Drosophila larvae. To investigate which wavelength of the UVA is responsible for the mutation we have now carried out a series of monochromatic irradiations (310, 320, 330, 340, 360, 380 and 400 nm) on Drosophila larvae, using the large spectrograph of the National Institute for Basic Biology (Okazaki National Research Institutes, Okazaki, Japan). Mutagenic activity was examined by the Drosophila wing-spot test in which we observe mutant wing hair colonies (spots) on the wings of adult flies obtained from the treated larvae. The induction of mutation was highest by irradiation at 310 nm and decreased as the wavelength became longer. Neither the 380 nor the 400 nm light was mutagenic. Excision repair is known to protect cells from UV damage. In the excision-repair-deficient Drosophila, the mutagenic response induced by 310 nm irradiation was 24-fold higher than that of the wild-type (7.2 +/- 1.5 spots/wing/kJ vs 0.3 +/- 0.08 spots/wing/kJ), and at 320 nm the difference of the response was 14-fold (0.21 vs 0.015 +/- 0.005). In the case of irradiation at 330 and 340 nm the difference of the response was only two-fold (at 330 nm, 6.9 +/- 2.9 x 10(-3) vs 3.1 +/- 1.1 x 10(-3) spots/wing/kJ; at 340 nm, 3.5 +/- 0.9 x 10(-3) vs 2.0 +/- 0.7 x 10(-3). These results suggest that the lesion caused in the larvae by 320 nm irradiation may be similar to the damage induced by 310 nm and that the lights of 330 and 340 nm may induce damage different from the lesions induced by shorter-wavelength lights.

No abstract

Beneficial effects of collagen peptide ingestion to reduce serum triacylglycerides have been reported, suggesting that the physiological conditions of adipocytes are modulated following collagen peptide ingestion. In this study, the effects of prolylhydroxyproline, a major digestive product of ingested collagen peptide in the blood, on the differentiation of mouse 3T3-L1 preadipocytes in vitro were investigated. 3T3-L1 preadipocytes were induced to differentiate to adipocytes and treated with prolylhydroxyproline, or with an amino acid mixture of proline and hydroxyproline as a control. The amount of lipid was not affected by these treatments. However, the size of the lipid droplet was significantly smaller when treated with prolylhydroxyproline compared to the amino acid mixture or the non-treated control. Proton-coupled oligopeptide transporters were expressed in non-differentiated and/or differentiated 3T3-L1 cells. These results suggest that prolylhydroxyproline might modulate the morphology of lipid droplets by incorporation into adipocytes through the transporters.

Process planning plays an important role as a bridge between product design and manufacturing. Computer-aided process planning (CAPP) has been a topic of discussion in this half century. The recent diversification in customers’ needs has been driving the development of agile manufacturing that can adapt to different manufacturing situations. CAPP should also be discussed from this point of view and, to this end, a set of flexible process planning methods have been proposed. Unlike conventional CAPP methods, these methods first generate all the feasible process plans. These are then evaluated, and then an optimal plan is selected. Therefore, it is possible to quickly provide an optimal new plan in the event of a change in the situation, by re-evaluating the plans against the new situation. However, these methods generally involve a large computational load, since the full search approach is taken to select an optimal plan. This study set out to reduce the computational load by formulating the selection process as a 0-1 integer programming problem that can now be solved thanks to recent developments in computer technology and solvers. Case studies have proven the efficacy of this method.