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Minimal persistent inflammation (MPI), the local inflammation that occurs after an acute type II immune response in patients with allergic rhinitis (AR), is responsible for airway hyperreactivity and the recurrence of AR. Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) play a crucial role in mucosal immune homeostasis, but the changes of ILC subsets in the MPI stage remain unclear. In this study, the levels of ILC-secreting cytokines in nasal lavages were analyzed from 19 AR patients and 8 healthy volunteers. AR and MPI model mice were established to study the ILC subsets. The results showed that IL-17A was significantly increased in nasal lavage of AR patients in the MPI stage by MSD technology. When compared with the AR model mice, the frequency of IL-13+ILC2 in the nasal mucosa and lungs decreased, while IL-5+ILC2 remain high in MPI model mice. A part of the IL-5+ILC2 subset displayed ILC3-like characteristics with elevated RORγt, IL-17A and IL-23R expression. Especially, these ILC3-like ILC2 exhibited up-regulation of GATA3+RORγt+ were increased in MPI model mice. After the treatment of Biminkang, the frequencies of IL-5+ILC2, IL-17A+ILC3, and GATA3+RORγt+ILC3-like ILC2 were significantly reduced, and IL-23R expression was also decreased on ILC3-like-ILC2 subset. These results suggested that the elevated IL-17A in the MPI stage has been related to or at least partly due to the increased of ILC3-like ILC2. Biminkang could effectively decrease IL-17A+ILC3 and inhibit ILC3-like ILC2 subset in the MPI stage. Biminkang is effective in administrating MPI by regulating airway ILC homeostasis.

In this work, we isolated and characterized fusapyrone A (1), a new γ-pyrone derivative, along with six previously described compounds from the rice fermentation of Fusarium sp. CPCC 401218, a fung...

Background. Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a highly prevalent chronic inflammatory disease of the respiratory tract. Previous studies have demonstrated that Bimin Kang Mixture (BMK) is effective in alleviating AR symptoms and reducing the secretion of inflammatory factors and mucin; however, the precise mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. Methods. We built target networks for each medication component using a network pharmacology technique and used RNA-seq transcriptome analysis to screen differentially expressed genes (DEGs) for AR patients and control groups. The overlapping targets in the two groups were assessed using PPI networks, GO, and KEGG enrichment analyses. The binding ability of essential components to dock with hub target genes was investigated using molecular docking. Finally, we demonstrate how BMK can treat AR by regulating the NF-κB signaling pathway through animal experiments. Results. Effective targets from network pharmacology were combined with DEGs from RNA-seq, with 20 intersections as key target genes. The construction of the PPI network finally identified 5 hub target genes, and all hub target genes were in the NF-κB signaling pathway. Molecular docking suggests that citric acid, deoxyandrographolide, quercetin, luteolin, and kaempferol are structurally stable and can spontaneously attach to IL-1β, CXCL2, CXCL8, CCL20, and PTGS2 receptors. Animal experiments have shown that BMK inhibits NF-κB transcription factor activation, reduces the expression of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines IL-1β, CXCL2, IL-8, and COX-2, and exerts anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects. Conclusion. BMK by regulating the NF-κB signaling pathway improves inflammatory cell infiltration, regulates mucosal immune balance, and reduces airway hypersensitivity. These findings provide theoretical support for the clinical efficacy of BMK for AR treatment.

Background: Traditional Chinese Medicine has demonstrated increasingly unique advantages in the treatment of lung cancer. Through literature review, it was found out that Platycodon grandiflorum had immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory effects, and it had a special targeting effect on the lung. Purpose：In order to determine the molecular mechanism of Platycodon grandiflorum in lung cancer treatment. Network pharmacology theory was used to do a systematic study.Methods: The active compounds of Platycodon grandiflorum were screened from TCMSP database. Then, compounds targets were predicted with the assistance of Swiss Target Prediction and STITCH. The targets of lung cancer were screened form TTD and DisGeNET database. The common targets of compounds and lung cancer were screened out for following analysis. A Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) Network was constructed by STRING. Subsequent to topological analysis, the hub targets were screened out for KEGG pathway and GO Enrichment. Molecular docking by AutoVina was performed to investigate the binding ability between the hub targets and compounds. Results: There were 4 active compounds screened out, including Acacetin, Spinasterol, cis-Dihydroquercetin and Luteolin. There were 80 targets screened as the common target of compounds and lung cancer. After topological analysis TP53, AKT1, VEGFA, CASP3, IL6, EGFR and MAPK1 were identified as hub targets. The 7 hub targets might be involved in 81 biological annotation and in the regulation of 23 pathways to intervene lung cancer. The main functional annotation was negative regulation of apoptotic process. Almost all of the pathways were directly or indirectly associated with the PI3K-Akt signal pathway and MAPK signal pathway. According to Affinity score of molecular docking the best binding protein for Luteolin was EGFR, and the best binding protein for Acacetin was CASP3. This meant that the Platycodon grandiflorum was easier to combine these two targets than other targets.Conclusion: Our study affirmed the effectiveness of Platycodon grandiflorum in treatment of lung cancer from molecular level. And we found that EGFR and CASP3 were the most likely targets for the direct action of Platycodon grandiflorum. The most important pathways that Platycodon grandiflori might interfere with were PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and MAPK signaling pathway.

In this work, we isolated and characterized fusapyrone A (

Ahmpatinin iBu (1) and statinin iBu (2), two new linear peptides, a novel pyrrolidine derivative, (−)-(S)-2-[3-(6-methylheptanamido)-2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl] acetic acid (3), and three known pepstatin derivatives (4–6) along with their corresponding methanolysis artifacts (7–9) were isolated from Streptomyces sp. CPCC 202950. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of extensive spectroscopic data using Marfey's analysis, chiral-phase HPLC, and ECD and OR calculation to determine the absolute configurations. Compound 1 contains an unusual amino acid, 4-amino-3-hydroxy-5-(4-methoxyphenyl)pentanoic acid (Ahmppa), and 3 is the first natural product with a 2-(3-amino-2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetic acid system. Compounds 1, 2, and 4–9 are HIV-1 protease inhibitors. In particular, ahmpatinin iBu (1) exhibits significant inhibitory activity against HIV-1 protease with an IC50 value of 1.79 nM. A preliminary structure–activity relationship is discussed.

Isocoumarindole A (1), a novel polyketide synthetase-nonribosomal peptide synthetase (PKS-NRPS) hybrid metabolite, was isolated from the endolichenic fungus Aspergillus sp. CPCC 400810. The structure of isocoumarindole A (1) was featured by an unprecedented skeleton containing chlorinated isocoumarin and indole diketopiperazine alkaloid moieties linked by a carbon-carbon bond, which was determined by a combination of spectroscopic analyses, Marfey's method, and calculations of NMR chemical shifts, ECD spectra, and optical rotation values. Isocoumarindole A showed significant cytotoxicity and mild antifungal activities.

Ahmpatinin

Eight compounds were isolated from the rice fermentation of Streptomyces sp. CPCC 202950 by a combination of various chromatographic techniques including column chromatography over silica, Sephadex LH-20, flash C₁₈, and reversed-phase HPLC. Their structures were identified as 3-[(3'-amino-3'-oxoprop-1'-en-2'-yl)oxy]benzamide (1), m-hydroxybenzamide (2), leptosphaepin (3), 5-methyluracil (4), feruloylamide (5), p-hydroxyphenylacetoamide (6), vanillamide (7), cyclo (L-val-L-ala) (8). Among them, 1 was a new benzamide analogue, and 2 was a new natural product. In the preliminary assays, none of the compounds 1-8 exhibited obvious inhibition of HIV-1 protease activity, and toxic with the Hela, HepG2, and U2OS cells. (IC₅₀10 μmol•L⁻¹).

Extracting the motion patterns from videos is a basic task in video surveillance and has become an active research area. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for discovering motion patterns in a scene observed by one or two cameras. The chaos theory is employed to compute the chaotic invariant features (CIFs) after obtaining all the trajectories. The CIFs and other features are combined to a feature vector and the trajectory is represented by the feature vector. Based on the CIFs, the motion patterns are grouped via mean shift clustering algorithm. Five challenging datasets are used for validation. Experimental results show the proposed method is effective in single camera and multiple cameras situation.

A single defect image segmentation algorithm cannot obtain the desired segmentation results for all images because of the defect diversity. A parallel combination segmentation method is proposed to integrate multiple results of the different segmentation algorithms to obtain the desired defect segmentation map for high-speed aluminum surface defect detection. Two types of segmentation algorithms are designed in this combination framework, namely, the automatic threshold segmentation based on the image statistical model and adaptive entropy-based segmentation. The automatic threshold segmentation algorithm detects defects rapidly using the threshold parameters obtained by modeling the image effectively, and the adaptive entropy-based segmentation algorithm effectively detects defects using ID information entropy. These two types of segmentation algorithms run in parallel, and their segmentation results are fused by an "and" operation. Thus, an improved image segmentation map with higher accuracy is obtained. Many experimental results and field applications show that the parallel combination segmentation algorithm is a stable and efficient segmentation algorithm, which improves the accuracy of the original segmentation algorithm that it contains.

The authors designed to separate, purify and determine the monosaccharide composition of the polysaccharide from Cordyceps militaris, and study its effect on reverse cholesterol transport in vivo by isotope tracing assay. Polysaccharides were separate and purify by ion exchange column Q-sepharose Fast Flow and size exclusion column Sephacryl S200HR; the molecular weight and monosaccharide composition of the polysaccharides were determined by high performance gel permeation chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography coming with pre-column derivation, respectively. Finally, three purified polysaccharides CMBW1, CMBW2 and CMYW1 were obtained, their total carbohydrate contents were 87%, 89%, 95%, respectively; their protein contents were 6.5%, 1.3%, 2.8%, respectively; their molecular weights were 772.1, 20.9, 13.2 kDa, respectively; CMBW1 was composed of mannose, glucosamine, rhamnose, glucuronic acid, glucose, galactose and arabinose with a molar ratio of 7.25: 0.17: 1.29: 0.23: 6.30: 11.08: 0.79; CMBW2 was composed of mannose, glucosamine, galactose and arabinose with a molar ratio of 2.40: 0.16: 2.92: 0.24; CMYW1 was composed of mannose, glucosamine, glucuronic acid and glucose with a molar ratio of 0.59: 0.57: 0.45: 25.61. Polysaccharide at 50 mg x kg(-1) could significantly improve the transport of 3H- cholesterol to blood and excretion from feces. All of the three purified polysaccharides CMBW1, CMBW2 and CMYW1 were heteropolysaccharide; and they could improve reverse cholesterol transport in vivo, the underlying mechanisms are being studied.

To study the relationship between the expression of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and the expression of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) as well as its effect on the development of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (ISCC).Western blot was used to detect ERK1/2 protein expression, meanwhile, the change of ERK1/2 activity was examined to measure its efficiency of phosphate transferase in 40 LSCC. Immunohistochemistry was applied to detect uPA protein expression. The correlation of each factor with relevant clinical factor was statistically analyzed.Expression of ERK1/2 showed a positive linear correlation (P0.05). Neither ERK1 nor ERK2 expression was significantly related to T-grades, histological classes and cervical lymph node status. Neither T-grades, nor histological classes was significantly related to ERK1/2 activity or uPA protein expression. There was significant correlation between ERK1/2 activity and cervical lymph node status and between uPA protein expression and cervical lymph node status (P0.05). ERK1/2 protein expression was correlated with neither ERK1/2 activity nor uPA protein expression, but there was a significant positive linear association between ERK1/2 activity and uPA protein expression (P0.05).Abnormal activation of ERK may play an important role in cervical lymph node metastasis of LSCC by up-regulation of uPA expression.

Plant life form diversity and its direct gradient analysis on a larger scale climate change gradient were tested, based on the data from Northeast China Transect platform. The results showed that the species numbers, life form richness and life form diversity were relative higher at the eastern forests and the ecotone between typical vegetation, while those on the meadow grasslands and typical steppes were lower. Although plant life forms can reflect the climate variations, life form diversity is not consistent with the major global gradient along the NECT.

Population demography, seed production, biomass allocation, net photosynthesis and transpiration of two Leymus chinensis divergent populations and between two years in Songnen plain, northeast China were compared. Strong differences between the dry 1997 and moist 1998 occurred in vegetative shoot and sexual shoot densities, sexual differentiation and tiller densities, as well as in the lengths of inflorescence, seed numbers per inflorescence, seed weights and biomass allocation in each population respectively (P0.01). While strong differences between the two populations occurred in vegetative shoot densities, sexual shoot densities, sexual differentiation and seed weights in each year (P0.01). The differences between the two populations in tiller densities and in biomass allocation to sexual shoots were significant (P0.05). But there were no significant differences between the two populations in the lengths of inflorescence, seed numbers per inflorescence and biomass allocation to rhizomes and vegetative shoots (P0.05). Excepting the transpiration rate in the early June, the differences between the two populations in net photosynthesis and transpiration rate of vegetative shoots and sexual shoots were strongly significant in the early June and July respectively (P0.01). Relative stable variations in population demography and physiological traits between the two populations indicated that they are divergently in the Songnen Plain.