The overall goal of this paper was to develop poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles (PLGA-NPs) of curcumin (CUR), named CUR-PLGA-NPs, and to study the effect and mechanisms enhancing the oral bioavailability of CUR. CUR-PLGA-NPs were prepared according to a solid-in-oil-in-water (s/o/w) solvent evaporation method and exhibited a smooth and spherical shape with diameters of about 200 nm. Characterization of CUR-PLGA-NPs showed CUR was successfully encapsulated on the PLGA polymer. The entrapment efficiency and loading rate of CUR were 91.96 and 5.75%, respectively. CUR-PLGA-NPs showed about 640-fold in water solubility relative to that of n-CUR. A sustained CUR release to a total of approximately 77% was discovered from CUR-PLGA-NPs in artificial intestinal juice, but only about 48% in artificial gastric juice. After oral administration of CUR-PLGA-NPs, the relative bioavailability was 5.6-fold and had a longer half-life compared with that of native curcumin. The results showed that the effect in improving oral bioavailability of CUR may be associated with improved water solubility, higher release rate in the intestinal juice, enhanced absorption by improved permeability, inhibition of P-glycoprotein (P-gp)-mediated efflux, and increased residence time in the intestinal cavity. Thus, encapsulating hydrophobic drugs on PLGA polymer is a promising method for sustained and controlled drug delivery with improved bioavailability of Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) class IV, such as CUR.

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The QCD quark cyclobutadiene (ring-like), a new color structure of tetraquark system, is proposed and studied in the flux-tube model with a multi-body confinement interaction. Numerical calculations show that the light tetraquark systems (u, d, s only) with cyclobutadiene, diquark-antidiquark flux-tube structures have similar energies and they can be regarded as QCD isomeric compounds. The energies of some tetraquark states are close to the masses of some excited mesons and so in the study of these mesons, the tetraquark components should be taken into account. There are also some meson states, σ, κ(800), f0(980), f0(1500), π1(1400), π1(1600), f2(1430) and K * (1410), where tetraquark components might be dominant. The meson states with exotic quantum numbers are studied as the tetraquark states. The multi-body confinement interaction reduces the energy of the tetraquark state in comparison with the usual additive two body confinement interaction model.

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Cyanobacteria have become more prevalent than other phytoplankton in freshwater assemblages during summer. In such conditions, cyanobacterial traits may reduce zooplankton fitness and the energy flow efficiency from primary producers to aquatic herbivores. Cladocerans, as the dominant zooplankton grazers in freshwater ecosystems, exhibit clonal variation in their tolerance to cyanobacteria with an increasing gradient in eutrophication history. Hitherto, research on the full modes of action (MoAs) of Daphnia clonal differences in tolerance to toxic Microcystis still remains in its infancy. We conducted fitness and transcriptome analyses on two Daphnia clones, clone TH09 and TH14. A significant decline in body growth rate was detected in the sensitive clone TH09 compared with the tolerant clone TH14 at the presence of toxic Microcystis. Furthermore, transcriptional analysis indicated that major MoAs such as glutathione metabolism, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, amino sugar/nucleotide sugar metabolism, and arachidonic acid metabolism were linked to the tolerance fitness in Daphnia similoides. These results provided mechanistic insights into the pathways of genetic and biological processes involved in cyanobacteria tolerance in the Daphnia clonal variation, and propose that the genetic architecture of this fitness‐related trait would be helpful to clarify how zooplankton clones adapt to harmful algal blooms.

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Fluctuations of interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and heparin-binding epidermal growth factor (HB-EGF) in endometrial receptivity were detected. Seventy-two patients receiving in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) for the first time in Yantaishan Hospital from July 2015 to September 2015 due to infertility were selected. The serum and follicular fluid of patients in ovulation-promoting cycle were collected; the levels of IL-1β and HB-EGF in serum and follicular fluid were detected via enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the levels of serum estradiol (E2), progesterone (P), follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) were detected. The endometria in early follicular phase and middle luteal phase were collected, and the mRNA expression levels of IL-1β and HB-EGF were evaluated by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Patients were divided into two groups, and the implantation group (n=33) and the non-implantation group (n=39), according to whether embryos were implanted and the general data. In IVF-ET, the levels of IL-1β and HB-EGF in follicular fluid and middle luteal phase, the level of serum IL-1β on human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) day and embryo transfer (ET) day, the levels of E2, FSH and LH on HCG day in implantation group were obviously higher than those in non-implantation group (p<0.05); the level of P on ET day in implantation group was significantly higher than that in non-implantation group (p<0.05); the expression levels of IL-1β and HB-EGF in endometrium in middle luteal phase in implantation group were higher than those in non-implantation group (p<0.05); the expression levels of IL-1β and HB-EGF in endometrium were positively correlated with the levels of E2 and P, and endometrial thickness (p<0.05). IL-1β and HB-EGF may improve the endometrial receptivity to embryo, thus affecting the embryo implantation rate, through the synergistic action with E2 and P, so they may be the indexes of predicting the IVF-ET pregnancy outcome.