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Enzymatic hydrolysis of zein as a fat substitute for the preparation of low-fat ice cream.

Binding to phenolics can improve the functional properties of proteins. Changes in structure, functional properties, and antigenicity of β-lactoglobulin (β-LG) after covalent conjugation with ferulic acid (FA) at different mass ratios were reported here. The results of SDS-PAGE and gel exclusion chromatography confirmed that covalent complexes were formed. When the mass ratio of β-LG and FA was 10:6, the binding content of FA was the highest. Fluorescence spectroscopy, UV-visible absorption spectrometry, and FTIR analysis showed that the structure of the complexes was more stretched compared to native β-LG. The addition of FA significantly improved the emulsifying property of β-LG. When the mass ratio was 10:6, the radical scavenging activities of DPPH and ABTS reached 65.06% and 88.22%, respectively, and the antigenicity of β-LG reduced by about 35%. This study provides novel β-LG-FA complexes in food systems to reduce the antigenicity of β-LG and improve functional properties.

Background Minimally invasive surgery of posterior cervical foraminotomy (PCF) for symptomatic radiculopathy has gained popularity in the last decade. It remains to be determined whether the 2 dominant operation techniques, full-endoscopic (FE) or microendoscopic (MI), are associated with fewer complications. Methods An electronic retrieval from PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science was performed to identify comparative or single-arm studies concerning FE-PCF and MI-PCF. The pooled incidence of complications was calculated. Results A total of 26 studies with 2028 patients (FE, 402; MI, 1626) were identified. The overall complication rate was 5.8% for FE-PCF and 3.5% for MI-PCF, with no significant difference (P = 0.115). The pooled complication rate for single-level radiculopathy showed no statistical difference (FE, 4.5%; MI, 3.5%; P = 0.471), either. However, constituent of complications showed apparent disparity, with transient root palsy in FE-PCF (15/19, 78.9%) and dural tear (20/47, 42.6%) in MI-PCF being the most commonly reported. As for the subgroup analysis, both incidence of dural tear (FE, 1.5%; MI, 1.8%; P = 0.672) and superficial wound infection (FE, 2.2%; MI, 1.0%; P = 0.109) showed no statistical difference. Nevertheless, transient root palsy occurred at a higher incidence in the FE group than in the MI group (FE, 4.5%; MI, 1.5%; P = 0.002). Conclusions Both FE-PCF and MI-PCF can offer relatively safe treatment for cervical radiculopathy. There is no significant difference in overall complication rate between the 2 techniques. Dural tear is the most commonly reported complication of MI-PCF, whereas transient root palsy deserves to be noticed for surgeons performing FE-PCF.

To construct a recombinant replication-defective human adenovirus type 5 expressing Cap protein of PCV2 and test the immunological efficacy in mice. In this study, the recombinant replication-defective human adenovirus type 5, named as rAd5-Cap (wt-rAd5), was constructed through homologous recombination internally in the HEK293AD cells after co-transfection of the Pac I-linearized backbone plasmid and the shuttle plasmid pacAd5CMV-Cap containing the open reading frame (ORF2) of the porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) cap protein or pacAd5CMV without inserted fragment. Furthermore, the rAd5-Cap could induce the expression of PCV2 cap protein in the HEK293AD cells with high efficacy evaluated by the RT-PCR and indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA). The virus titer of rAd5-Cap could reach up to 10(8.5) TCID50/mL similarly to that of wt-rAd5, indicating that there was little affect on the virus proliferation after the insertion of PCV2 cap protein gene. The humeral immune responses could be activated and detected 14 days after the inoculation of the mice with 10(7) TCID50 rAd5-Cap intramuscularly, and constantly in crease in another 14 days. These molecular biological and animal experiments results demonstrated that the PCV2 cap protein could be efficiently expressed by the recombinant adenovirus rAd5-Cap in eukaryotic cells and induce robust immune responses in mice, which laid a good foundation for the development of new type vaccine against porcine circovirus.