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This study demonstrates that testosterone functions to enhance taurine synthesis by interacting with androgen receptor and binding to cysteine sulfinate decarboxylase ( CSAD) promoter zone. Whereas estrogen has no significant effects either on liver CSAD expression or taurine synthesis in male mice and suggests that the effects of sex steroids on taurine synthesis in the liver have gender differences. These new findings are the potential for establishing effective protective and therapeutic strategies for liver diseases.

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl

Taurine performs multiple physiological functions, and the maintenance of taurine level for most mammals relies on active uptake from diet and endogenous taurine synthesis through its synthesis enzymes, including cysteine dioxygenase (CDO). In addition, uterus tissue and uterus fluid are rich in taurine, and taurine synthesis is regulated by estrogen (EThe uterine CDO expression was assayed from the first day of plugging (d 1) to d 8 and the results showed that CDO expression level increased from d 1 to d 4, followed by a significant decline on d 5 and persisted to d 8, which was highly correlated with serum and uterine taurine levels, and serum PThe present study firstly demonstrates that taurine and CDO play prominent roles in uterine receptivity and embryo implantation by involving in E

Breast cancer is the second most cause of mortality among women worldwide due to the uncontrolled proliferation of tumor cells in the mammary epithelial tissues. The silver nanoparticles were formulated from the Abies spectabilis leaf (AS-AgNPs) and characterized by various practices like UV-vis spectroscopy, FTIR, SEM, and XRD. The in vitro anticancer potential of fabricated AS-AgNPs against the MCF-7 cells were analyzed. The MTT test was executed to investigate the cytotoxic nature of fabricated AS-AgNPs against MCF-7 cells. The magnitudes of ROS accumulation and MMP level in the AS-AgNPs supplemented MCF-7 cells were studied using fluorescent staining techniques. Caspase activities were studied using assay kits. The contents of oxidative stress and antioxidant biomarker (TBARS, SOD, CAT, and GSH) levels were scrutinized by standard methods. The expressions of apoptotic markers like Bax and Bcl-2 in the AS-AgNPs administered MCF-7 cells were detected by RT-PCR assay. The MTT findings showed that both extract and fabricated AS-AgNPs remarkably decreased the MCF-7 cells. Nonetheless, both plant extract and AS-AgNPs did not affect the cell viability of MCF-10A cells. Furthermore, the fabricated AS-AgNPs improved the ROS accumulation, and depleted the MMP status in the MCF-7 cells. AS-AgNPs administered MCF-7 cells demonstrated the improved TBARS content and depleted antioxidants. The treatment with AS-AgNPs considerably elevated the caspase-9 and -3 activities and Bax expression, while decreasing the Bcl-2 expression in MCF-7 cells. Hence the current investigation reports that the formulated AS-AgNPs exhibited remarkable in vitro anticancer action against MCF-7 cells through increased ROS, oxidative stress, and apoptotic protein expression. The fabricated AS-AgNPs could be a possible anticancer remedy in the future.

Cadmium (Cd), a heavy metal contaminant, seriously threatens human and animal health. Taurine (Tau) has been used against hepatotoxicity caused by different environmental toxins. However, it has not been elucidated whether Tau exerts its protective function against Cd-induced hepatotoxicity. The aim of this study was thus to evaluate the ameliorative function of Tau (500 mg/kg body weight intraperitoneally) on Cd-induced (2 mg/kg body weight intraperitoneally) liver toxicity in mice for 14 days. The histopathologic and ultrastructure changes as well as alterations in indexes related to liver function, antioxidant biomarkers, inflammatory, and apoptosis were evaluated. The results showed that Tau alleviated the vacuolar degeneration, nuclear condensation, mitochondria swelling, and cristae lysis of hepatocytes induced by Cd. In addition, Tau treatment significantly reduced the ALT, AST levels in serum, and inflammatory factor TNF-α and IL-1β in liver tissue. Furthermore, Tau treatment decreased the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and cleaved caspase-3 protein expression levels. Taken together, these observations demonstrate that Tau has an important hepatic protective function against the inflammation and apoptosis induced by Cd.

Cadmium (Cd), a heavy metal contaminant,which seriously threatens human and animal health. Taurine (Tau) has been used to against hepatotoxicity caused by different environmental toxins. However, it has not been elucidated whether Tau exerts its protective function against Cd-induced hepatotoxicity. The aim of this study was thus to evaluate the ameliorative function of Tau on Cd-induced liver toxicity in mice. The histopathologic and ultrastructure changes, as well as alterations in indexes related to liver function, antioxidant biomarkers, inflammatory and apoptosis were evaluated. The results showed that Tau alleviated the vacuolar degeneration, nuclear condensation, mitochondria swelling and cristae lysis of hepatocytes induced by Cd. In addition, Tau treatment significantly restored the ALT, AST levels in serum, and inflammatory factor TNF-α and IL-1β in liver tissue. Furthermore, Tau treatment decreased the Bax/Bcl-2 ratio and cleaved caspase-3 protein expression levels. Taken together, these observations demonstrate that Tau has important hepatic protective function against the inflammation and apoptosis induced by Cd.

Traditional PV inverter is designed for power generation and reducing harmonic distortion without capability of actively participating in harmonic elimination of power grid. This study proposes a virtual resistance based PV inverter to suppress the voltage harmonics at point of common coupling (PCC), in which PV inverters could simultaneously deliver power for fundamental and behave as a series of virtual resistances to absorb power harmonics and then convert them into fundamental power; as a result, voltage distortion of each node of power grid is significantly reduced. No additional sensors are required to measure the non-linear load current, such that a more flexible installation location of PV inverter can be achieved. Furthermore, current harmonics are controlled by PI controller to track the voltage harmonics multiplied by harmonic conductance, i.e. K h, such that the PV inverter can be equivalent to a virtual resistance. In particular, the absorbed power harmonics are used to evaluate the harmonic suppression, while harmonic conductance K h is regulated automatically to maximise the absorbed power harmonics. Both the simulation and experiment results demonstrate that the effectiveness of the propose method.

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death in cancer categories, followed by lung, colorectal, and ovarian among the female gender across the world. 10H-3,6-diazaphenothiazine (PTZ) is a thiazine derivative compound that exhibits many pharmacological activities. Herein, we proceed to investigate the pharmacological activities of PTZ toward breast cancer MCF-7 cells as a representative in vitro breast cancer cell model. The PTZ exhibited a proliferation inhibition (IC50 = 0.895 µM) toward MCF-7 cells. Further, cell cycle analysis illustrated that the S-phase checkpoint was activated to achieve proliferation inhibition. In vitro cytotoxicity test on three normal cell lines (HEK293 normal kidney cells, MCF-10A normal breast cells, and H9C2 normal heart cells) demonstrated that PTZ was more potent toward cancer cells. Increase in the levels of reactive oxygen species results in polarization of mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm), together with suppression of mitochondrial thioredoxin reductase enzymatic activity suggested that PTZ induced oxidative damages toward mitochondria and contributed to improved drug efficacy toward treatment. The RT2 PCR Profiler Array (human apoptosis pathways) proved that PTZ induced cell death via mitochondria-dependent and cell death receptor-dependent pathways, through a series of modulation of caspases, and the respective morphology of apoptosis was observed. Mechanistic studies of apoptosis suggested that PTZ inhibited AKT1 pathways resulting in enhanced drug efficacy despite it preventing invasion of cancer cells. These results showed the effectiveness of PTZ in initiation of apoptosis, programmed cell death, toward highly chemoresistant MCF-7 cells, thus suggesting its potential as a chemotherapeutic drug.

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) is a widely used hepatotoxin for the studies of liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, and taurine has function to abate liver fibrosis induced by CCl4. But the interacting mechanisms between taurine and CCl4 in liver are still largely unknown. These made us to hypothesize that CCl4 may induce liver fibrosis by affecting the expressions of taurine biosynthetic enzymes and taurine synthesis. We thus assayed the expressions of hepatic cysteine dioxygenase (CDO), cysteine sulfonate acid decarboxylase (CSAD) and taurine transporter (TauT) in the progression of mouse liver fibrosis induced by CCl4. The results demonstrated that CCl4 treatment markedly decreased hepatic CSAD, CDO expressions, and taurine levels in hepatic tissue, although TauT expression did not exhibit significant decline. It was contrasting that hepatic α-SMA, serum AST, ALT, ALP kept increasing, which were accompanied by the pathological characters of liver, whereas taurine supplement attenuated the progression of liver fibrosis induced by CCl4. These results demonstrate that CCl4 may induce liver fibrosis by inhibiting hepatic CSAD and CDO expressions and taurine synthesis, which are crucial for our understanding the mechanisms of liver fibrosis induced by CCl4, and also potential for establishing therapeutic strategies of liver fibrosis and related diseases.