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The scholarship in modern China is closely related to Western sinology in terms of school ties.Gu Jiegang’s launching of the"Discussion of Ancient History"movement centered on the"theory of the accumulated creation of Chinese ancient history"was a representative example.At the beginning of the movement Hu Shi and Gu Jiegang proposed the notion that,"there was no history before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty"which was indebted to the historical skepticism by Philip Van Ness Myers(American scholar)and Friedrich Hirth(German sinologist)of the same period.The idea that"the Shang Dynasty is still in the late Stone Age"advocated by Hu and Gu was also directly influenced by J.G.Andersson’s An Early Chinese Culture.Conversely,American sinologist Arthur W.Hummel Sr played a key role in introducing and evaluating the first volume of Discussion of Ancient History to Western academia.Paradoxically,while Swedish sinologis Bernhard Karlgren wrote On the Authenticity and Nature of the Tso Chuan to refute Kang Youwei’s reinterpretation of Confucian Classics(The Forged Classics of the Wang Mang Period),his work however became of value for Chinese historic doubt scholars to reaffirm the value of New Text Confucianism and advance the"Discussion of Ancient History"movement.If we would like to choose a saying to describe the relationship between the"Discussion of Ancien History"movement and Western Sinology,the Chinese proverb,"Stones from other hills may serve to polish jade of this one,"may be an appropriate choice.

Background: Early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) may improve the prognosis of patients. This study was to identify metabolic features of PDAC and to discover early detection biomarkers for PDAC by tissue and serum metabolomics analysis. Methods: We conducted nontargeted metabolomics analysis in tissue samples of 51 PDAC tumors, 40 noncancerous pancreatic tissues (NT), and 14 benign pancreatic neoplasms (BP) as well as serum samples from 80 patients with PDAC, 36 with BP, and 48 healthy controls (Ctr). The candidate metabolites identified from the initial analysis were further quantified using targeted analysis in serum samples of an independent cohort of 22 early stage PDAC, 27 BP, and 27 Ctr subjects. Unconditional binary logistic regression analysis was used to construct the optimal model for PDAC diagnosis. Results: Upregulated levels of fatty acids and lipids and downregulated amino acids were observed in tissue and serum samples of PDAC patients. Proline, creatine, and palmitic acid were identified as a panel of potential biomarkers to distinguish PDAC from BP and Ctr (odds ratio = 2.17, [95% confidence interval 1.34–3.53]). The three markers showed area under the receiver‐operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of 0.854 and 0.865, respectively, for the comparison of PDAC versus Ctr and PDAC versus BP. The AUCs were 0.830 and 0.852 in the validation set and were improved to 0.949 and 0.909 when serum carbohydrate antigen 19‐9 (CA19‐9) was added to the model. Conclusion: The novel metabolite biomarker panel identified in this study exhibited promising performance in distinguishing PDAC from BP or Ctr, especially in combination with CA19‐9. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult skeletal muscle stem cells, also known satellite cells (SCs), are a highly heterogeneous population and reside between the basal lamina and the muscle fiber sarcolemma. Myofibers function as an immediate niche to support SC self-renewal and activation during muscle growth and regeneration. Herein, we demonstrate that microRNA 378 (miR-378) regulates glycolytic metabolism in skeletal muscle fibers, as evidenced by analysis of myofiber-specific miR-378 transgenic mice (TG). Subsequently, we evaluate SC function and muscle regeneration using miR-378 TG mice. We demonstrate that miR-378 TG mice significantly attenuate muscle regeneration because of the delayed activation and differentiation of SCs. Furthermore, we show that the miR-378-mediated metabolic switch enriches Pax7Hi SCs, accounting for impaired muscle regeneration in miR-378 TG mice. Mechanistically, our data suggest that miR-378 targets the Akt1/FoxO1 pathway, which contributes the enrichment of Pax7Hi SCs in miR-378 TG mice. Together, our findings indicate that miR-378 is a target that links fiber metabolism to muscle stem cell heterogeneity and provide a genetic model to approve the metabolic niche role of myofibers in regulating muscle stem cell behavior and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rapid and sensitive LC–MS/MS method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of nicotinamide and its metabolite N1‐methylnicotinamide in human serum. Serum samples were prepared by protein precipitation with acetonitrile. The chromatographic separation was performed on a Waters Spherisorb S5 CN microbore column (2.0 × 100 mm, 5 μm) with gradient elution within 7 min. Acetonitrile and 5 mm ammonium formate aqueous solution (containing 0.1% formic acid) were used as mobile phases. Nicotinamide, N1‐methylnicotinamide and N′‐methylnicotinamide (internal standard) were detected with a triple‐quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer in the positive ion mode. Multiple reaction monitoring was used to monitor precursor to product ion transitions of m/z 123.1 → 80.1 for nicotinamide, m/z 137.1 → 94.1 for N1‐methylnicotinamide and m/z 137.1 → 80.1 for the internal standard. The linear ranges of nicotinamide and N1‐methylnicotinamide were 5.000–160.0 and 2.500–80.00 ng/ml, respectively. The intra‐ and inter‐day precisions (RSD) of both analytes were within 6.90%. The recoveries were >88%. The analytes were proven to be stable during all sample storage, preparation and analytic procedures. The method was successfully applied to determine the concentrations of nicotinamide and N1‐methylnicotinamide in human serum to investigate the association between their concentrations and obesity in 1160 Chinese subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Depression is becoming an urgent mental health problem. Si-Ni-San has been widely used to treat depression, yet its underlying pharmacological mechanism is poorly understood. Thus, we aim to explore the antidepressant mechanism of Si-Ni-San by chemical analysis and in-silico methods., Methods: Compounds in Si-Ni-San were determined by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS). Then, bioactive compounds were obtained from Traditional Chinese Medicines for Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform and SwissADME, and the potential targets of which were acquired from SwissTargetPrediction. Depression-related targets were collected from GeneCards. The intersection between compound-related targets and depression-related targets were screened out, and the overlapped targets were further performed protein-protein interaction, biological functional and pathway enrichment analysis. Finally, networks of Si-Ni-San against depression were constructed and visualized by Cytoscape., Results: One hundred nineteen compounds in Si-Ni-San were determined, of which 24 bioactive compounds were obtained. Then, 137 overlapped targets of Si-Ni-San against depression were collected. AKT1, PIK3R1, PIK3CA, mTOR, MAPK1 and MAPK8 were the key targets. Furthermore, PI3K-Akt signalling pathway, serotonergic synapse, MAPK signalling pathway and neurotrophin signalling pathway were involved in the antidepressant mechanism of Si-Ni-San. It showed that components like sinensetin, hesperetin, liquiritigenin, naringenin, quercetin, albiflorin and paeoniflorin were the mainly key active compounds for the antidepressant effect of Si-Ni-San., Conclusions: This study demonstrated the key components, key targets and potential pharmacological mechanisms of Si-Ni-San against depression. These results indicate that Si-Ni-San is a promising therapeutic approach for treatment of depression, and may provide evidence for the research and development of drugs for treating depression., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.Sponsorships or competing interests that may be relevant to content are disclosed at the end of this article, (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

A rapid and sensitive LC-MS/MS method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of nicotinamide and its metabolite N 1 -methylnicotinamide in human serum. Serum samples were prepared by protein precipitation with acetonitrile. The chromatographic separation was performed on a Waters Spherisorb S5 CN microbore column (2.0 × 100 mm, 5 μm) with gradient elution within 7 min. Acetonitrile and 5 mm ammonium formate aqueous solution (containing 0.1% formic acid) were used as mobile phases. Nicotinamide, N 1 -methylnicotinamide and N'-methylnicotinamide (internal standard) were detected with a triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer in the positive ion mode. Multiple reaction monitoring was used to monitor precursor to product ion transitions of m/z 123.1 → 80.1 for nicotinamide, m/z 137.1 → 94.1 for N 1 -methylnicotinamide and m/z 137.1 → 80.1 for the internal standard. The linear ranges of nicotinamide and N 1 -methylnicotinamide were 5.000-160.0 and 2.500-80.00 ng/ml, respectively. The intra- and inter-day precisions (RSD) of both analytes were within 6.90%. The recoveries were >88%. The analytes were proven to be stable during all sample storage, preparation and analytic procedures. The method was successfully applied to determine the concentrations of nicotinamide and N 1 -methylnicotinamide in human serum to investigate the association between their concentrations and obesity in 1160 Chinese subjects., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)