No abstract

Strain ST22 and SX10 isolated from the twigs of Ginkgo biloba L. were found to be able to produce phenolic and flavonoid compounds. They were systematically identified by both morphological and molecular methods. Morphological identification, which employed light microscope and scanning electron microscope, showed that ST22 and SX10 are members of Aspergillus. ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 regions of these two strains were cloned in order to carry out a similarity alignment. ST22 was identified as Aspergillus nidulans and SX10 as Aspergillus oryzae. In addition, the total phenolic and flavonoid contents were measured via UV-spectrophotometry. The total phenolic contents in ST22 and SX10 were 0.1413±0.0098 and 0.1450±0.0154 mg/ml, respectively. The amounts of total flavonoids in ST22 and SX10 were 0.01162±0.0014 and 0.01256±0.00378 mg/ml, respectively. It was concluded that these two strains may have potential as sources of natural medicines or prodrugs.

An ovel fluorescent probe was developed by integrating chlorinated coumarin and benzothiazolylacetonitrile and exploited for simultaneous detection of cysteine (Cys), homocysteine (Hcy), and glutathione (GSH). Featuring four binding sites and different reaction mechanisms for different biothiols,t his probe exhibited rapid fluorescence turn-on for distinguishing Cys,H cy,a nd GSH with 108-, 128-, 30-fold fluorescence increases at 457, 559, 529 nm, respectively,across different excitation wavelengths.F urthermore,t he probe was successfully applied to the fluorescence imaging of endogenous Cys and GSH and exogenous Cys,H cy,a nd GSH in living cells.

The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs16754 of the WT1 gene has been described as a possible prognostic marker in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, the results in this field are not reproducible in different cohorts. In this study, we investigated WT1 mutations, expression levels and SNP rs16754 in a cohort of 122 adult patients with AML. As the major allele (65.6%) in a Chinese population, WT1(GG) was associated with younger age (≤ 60) and lower percentage of blasts than WT1(GA/AA). Meanwhile, improved overall survival (OS, p = 0.035) and disease-free survival (DFS, p = 0.021) were observed in WT1(GG) compared with WT1(GA/AA). We then found that WT1 mutation, occurring in 8% of patients with AML, did not predict clinical outcome. Finally, WT1 levels were higher in patients with WT1(GG) than in those with WT1(GA/AA). However, high levels of WT1 (> median) predicted worse OS (p = 0.015) and DFS (p = 0.034) than low levels of WT1 (≤ median). However, further studies are required to elucidate the mechanism of why WT1(GG), which was associated with higher median expression of WT1 that predicts worse OS and DFS compared to low expression of WT1, predicted better OS and DFS compared with WT1(GA/AA). In summary, WT1 rs16754 and WT1 expression have a significant impact on clinical outcome in patients with AML.