Antioxidant Effects and Potential Molecular Mechanism of Action of Limonium aureum Extract Based on Systematic Network Pharmacology

Abstract

Oxidative stress is the redox imbalance state of organisms that involves in a variety of biological processes of diseases. Limonium aureum (L.) Hill. is an excellent wild plant resource in northern China, which has potential application value for treating oxidative stress. However, there are few studies that focused on the antioxidant effect and related mechanism of L. aureum. Thus, the present study combining systematic network pharmacology and molecular biology aimed to investigate the antioxidant effects of L. aureum and explore its underlying anti-oxidation mechanisms. First, the antioxidant activity of L. aureum extracts was confirmed by in vitro and intracellular antioxidant assays. Then, a total of 11 bioactive compounds, 102 predicted targets, and 70 antioxidant-related targets were obtained from open source databases. For elucidating the molecular mechanisms of L. aureum, the PPI network and integrated visualization network based on bioinformatics assays were constructed to preliminarily understand the active compounds and related targets. The subsequent enrichment analysis results showed that L. aureum mainly affect the biological processes involving oxidation-reduction process, response to drug, etc., and the interference with these biological processes might be due to the simultaneous influence on multiple signaling pathways, including the HIF-1 and ERBB signaling pathways. Moreover, the mRNA levels of predicted hub genes were measured by qRT-PCR to verify the regulatory effect of L. aureum on them. Collectively, this finding lays a foundation for further elucidating the anti-oxidative damage mechanism of L. aureum and promotes the development of therapeutic drugs for oxidative stress.

Study on the Alleviating Effect and Potential Mechanism of Ethanolic Extract of Limonium aureum (L.) Hill. on Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Inflammatory Responses in Macrophages

“…Astragalus polysaccharide (APS) has been shown to reduce the levels of ROS, MDA, and NO in diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) cell models, improve the activity of antioxidant enzymes, and promote the proliferation of DCM cells, thus playing a protective role in DCM cells, which may be related to the activation of the NGR1/ErbB signaling pathway by APS [63]. LAH has been reported to have favorable antioxidant activity in previous studies [64], and thus its modulation of oxidative metabolism may also be involved in its promotion of cell proliferation.…”

Bioengineering novel AAV9-mGULO-GT for multi-disease gene therapy: Targeting mutated GULO expression to cure scurvy and brain diseases.

“…We identified 362 upregulated genes and 262 downregulated genes in the AAV9-treated samples, indicating significant changes in gene expression profiles. The treated group exhibited significant upregulation of genes related to defense system innate immune responses, cytoplasmic regulation, protein bindings, plasma membrane, cytosol regulation, and ion binding, among others 92,94 . The enhancement of cytokine expression in the treated group suggests that the therapy may help to regulate inflammation and enhance immune responses, leading to better overall health 93,94 .…”

“…Furthermore, in our study on AAV9-mGULO-GT gene therapy in guinea pigs, we compared bulk RNA-seq data from the treated and untreated (scurvy) groups to explore the transcriptome level of the guinea pig brain. We identified 362 upregulated and 262 downregulated genes in the AAV9-treated samples 92 . Enrichment analysis of these genes revealed that the upregulated genes were enriched in several functional categories (Fig 8E and 93 .…”

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