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Abstract Ficus carica L. (FC) is rich in phenolic compounds such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, and anthocyanins. Phenolic compounds in FC show remarkable health benefits and applications. The composition of phenolic compounds in FC can vary with some factors, such as variety, ripeness, geographical location, extraction methods and processing methods. New techniques such as supercritical fluid extraction, subcritical water extraction and ionic liquid extraction should be further developed and combined with traditional techniques to obtain higher quality sources of phenolic compounds. Numerous in vivo and in vitro studies reported healthy benefits of phenolic compounds in FC, such as anti‐oxidant, anti‐inflammatory, anti‐diabetic, anti‐obesity, anti‐cancer and anti‐Alzheimer's. Further works are required to reveal mechanisms and structure‐activity relationships, such as targeted metabolomics and pharmacological studies. In terms of applications, phenolic compounds in FC as prebiotics on the intestinal flora need to be further studied to expand their applicability in food fermentation. In a word, this review highlights the remarkable health benefits and application value of phenolic compounds in FC.

(1) Background: Discarded young fig fruits (DYFFs) result in a waste of resources, such as sparse fruits and residual fruits, and there has been no research on the relationship between phenolic compounds and biological activity in DYFFs (2) Methods: Different deep eutectic solvents (DESs) and 80% ethanol were used to prepare DYFF extracts, and polyphenol extraction efficiency and bioactivities in the DYFFs extracts were compared. (3) Results: More than 1700 phytochemicals were identified in DYFFs, and thirteen of these typical phenolic compounds were analyzed quantitatively; chlorogenic acid, rutin, luteolin 8-C-glucoside, and epicatechin are the main polyphenols in DYFFs, especially chlorogenic acid with 2720–7980 mg/kg. Ferulic acid, caffeic acid, epicatechin, (+)-catechin, luteolin 8-C-glucoside, rutin, hesperetin, and chlorogenic acid showed different degrees of correlation with in vitro antioxidant activity. Moreover, the highest total phenol content found in the extracts of ChCl-Ethylene glycol (Choline chloride:Ethylene glycol = 1:2) was 8.88 mg GAE/g DW, and all quantitatively analyzed phenolic compounds had high levels in various DESs and 80% ethanol. The 80% ethanol and Choline chloride (ChCl) solvent system showed the greatest antioxidant properties, and the Choline chloride-Urea (Choline chloride: Urea = 1:2) extract of DYFFs exhibited the highest inhibitory activity. (4) Conclusions: DESs have demonstrated potential as promising green solvents, especially the ChCl solvent system, which facilitates the extraction of polyphenols.

It is well known that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in the regulation of tumor genesis and development. They can modulate gene expression of transcriptional regulation, epigenetic regulation of chromatin modification, and post-transcriptional regulation, thus influencing the biological behavior of tumors, such as cell proliferation, apoptosis, cell cycle, invasion, and migration. Tumor angiogenesis not only provides nutrients and helps excrete metabolites, but it also opens a pathway for tumor metastasis. Anti-angiogenic therapy has become one of the effective treatment methods for tumor. But its drug resistance leads to the limitation of clinical application. Recent studies have shown that lncRNAs are closely related to tumor angiogenesis and anti-angiogenic therapy resistance, which provides a new direction for tumor research. lncRNAs are expected to be new targets for tumor therapy. For the first time to our knowledge, this paper reviews advancement of lncRNAs in tumor angiogenesis and anti-angiogenic therapy resistance and further discusses their potential clinical application.

Food recognition and weight estimation based on image methods have always been hotspots in the field of computer vision and medical nutrition, and have good application prospects in digital nutrition therapy and health detection. With the development of deep learning technology, image-based recognition technology has also rapidly extended to various fields, such as agricultural pests, disease identification, tumor marker recognition, wound severity judgment, road wear recognition, and food safety detection. This article proposes a non-wearable food recognition and weight estimation system (nWFWS) to identify the food type and food weight in the target recognition area via smartphones, so to assist clinical patients and physicians in monitoring diet-related health conditions. In addition, the system is mainly designed for mobile terminals; it can be installed on a mobile phone with an Android system or an iOS system. This can lower the cost and burden of additional wearable health monitoring equipment while also greatly simplifying the automatic estimation of food intake via mobile phone photography and image collection. Based on the system’s ability to accurately identify 1,455 food pictures with an accuracy rate of 89.60%, we used a deep convolutional neural network and visual-inertial system to collect image pixels, and 612 high-resolution food images with different traits after systematic training, to obtain a preliminary relationship model between the area of food pixels and the measured weight was obtained, and the weight of untested food images was successfully determined. There was a high correlation between the predicted and actual values. In a word, this system is feasible and relatively accurate for one automated dietary monitoring and nutritional assessment.

BackgroundMalnutrition is a common and severe problem in patients with cancer that directly increases the incidence of complications and significantly deteriorates quality of life. Nutritional risk screening and dietary assessment are critical because they are the basis for providing personalized nutritional support. No digital smartphone-based self-administered tool for nutritional risk screening and dietary assessment among hospitalized patients with cancer has been developed and evaluated. ObjectiveThis study aims to develop a digital smartphone-based self-administered mini program for nutritional risk screening and dietary assessment for hospitalized patients with cancer and to evaluate the validity of the mini program. MethodsWe have developed the R+ Dietitian mini program, which consists of 3 parts: (1) collection of basic information of patients, (2) nutritional risk screening, and (3) dietary energy and protein assessment. The face-to-face paper-based Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS-2002), the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment Short Form (PG-SGA-SF), and 3 days of 24-hour dietary recall (3d-24HRs) questionnaires were administered according to standard procedure by 2 trained dietitians as the reference methods. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, κ value, and correlation coefficients (CCs) of nutritional risk screened in R+ Dietitian against the reference methods, as well as the difference and CCs of estimated dietary energy and protein intakes between R+ Dietitian and 3d-24HRs were calculated to evaluate the validity of R+ Dietitian. ResultsA total of 244 hospitalized patients with cancer were recruited to evaluate the validity of R+ Dietitian. The NRS-2002 and PG-SGA-SF tools in R+ Dietitian showed high accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity (77.5%, 81.0%, and 76.7% and 69.3%, 84.5%, and 64.5%, respectively), and fair agreement (κ=0.42 and 0.37, respectively; CC 0.62 and 0.56, respectively) with the NRS-2002 and PG-SGA-SF tools administered by dietitians. The estimated intakes of dietary energy and protein were significantly higher (P

With the increasing demand and quality requirement for the natural nutritious food in modern society, okra has attracted much attention because of its high nutritional value and remarkable functionality. However, the occurrence of postharvest diseases of fresh okra severely limited the application and the value of okra. Therefore, in this study, the dominant pathogens causing postharvest diseases such as soft rot were isolated from naturally decaying okra. It was identified as Mucor circinelloides by its morphological characteristics and standard internal transcribed spacer ribosomal DNA sequence. Furthermore, the biological characteristics of M. circinelloides were studied, and the inhibitory effect of thymol/KGM/LG (TKL) edible coating solution on M. circinelloides and its possible mechanism was discussed. In addition, TKL edible coating solution had a dose-dependent inhibitory effect on M. circinelloides, with a 50% inhibitory concentration (EC50) of 113.55 mg/L. The TKL edible coating solution at 960 mg/L of thymol completely inhibited mycelial growth and spore germination of M. circinelloides. The results showed that the best carbon source of M. circinelloides was maltose, the best nitrogen source was beef extract and potassium nitrate, the best pH was 6, the best temperature was 28°C, the best NaCl concentration was 0.5%, and the light was conducive to the growth of M. circinelloides. It was also observed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) that TKL was more likely to destroy the cell wall integrity of M. circinelloides, inhibit spore morphology and change mycelium structure. Meanwhile, the activity of chitinase (CHI), an enzyme related to cell wall synthesis of M. circinelloides, was significantly decreased after being treated by TKL with thymol at 100 mg/L (TKL100). The content of Malondialdehyde (MDA) in M. circinelloides decreased significantly from 12 h to 48 h, which may cause oxidative damage to the cell membrane. The activity polygalacturonase (PG), pectin methylgalacturonase (PMG), and cellulase (Cx) of M. circinelloides decreased significantly. Therefore, the results showed that TKL had a good bacteriostatic effect on okra soft rot pathogen, and the main bacteriostatic mechanism might be the damage of cell membrane, degradation of the cell wall, inhibition of metabolic activities, and reduction of metabolites, which is helpful to further understand the inhibitory effect of TKL on okra soft rot pathogen and its mechanism.

Okra has received extensive attention due to its high nutritional value and remarkable functional characteristics, but postharvest diseases have severely limited its application. It is important to further explore the methods and potential methods to control the postharvest diseases of okra. In this study, Colletotrichum fioriniae is the major pathogen that causes okra anthracnose, which can be isolated from naturally decaying okra. The pathogenicity of C. fioriniae against okra was preliminarily verified, and the related biological characteristics were explored. At the same time, an observational study was conducted to investigate the in vitro antifungal effect of thymol edible coating (TKL) on C. fioriniae. After culturing at 28 °C for 5 days, it was found that TKL showed an obvious growth inhibition effect on C. fioriniae. The concentration for 50% of the maximal effect was 95.10 mg/L, and the minimum inhibitory concentration was 1000 mg/L. In addition, it was found that thymol edible coating with a thymol concentration of 100 mg/L (TKL100) may cause different degrees of damage to the cell membrane, cell wall, and metabolism of C. fioriniae, thereby inhibiting the growth of hyphae and causing hyphal rupture. Refer to the results of the in vitro bacteriostatic experiment. Furthermore, the okra was sprayed with TKL100. It was found that the TKL100 coating could significantly inhibit the infection of C. fioriniae to okra, reduce the rate of brown spots and fold on the okra surface, and inhibit mycelium growth. In addition, the contents of total phenols and flavonoids of okra treated with TKL100 were higher than those of the control group. Meanwhile, the activities of phenylalaninammo-nialyase, cinnamic acid-4-hydroxylase, and 4-coumarate-CoA ligase in the lignin synthesis pathway were generally increased, especially after 6 days in a 28 °C incubator. The lignin content of TKL-W was the highest, reaching 65.62 ± 0.68 mg/g, which was 2.24 times of that of CK-W. Therefore, TKL may promote the synthesis of total phenols and flavonoids in okra, then stimulate the activity of key enzymes in the lignin synthesis pathway, and finally regulate the synthesis of lignin in okra. Thus, TKL could have a certain controlling effect on okra anthracnose.