Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is one of the most extensively used oil crops in the world. However, little is known about how its compounds are synthesized at the genetic level. In this study, Solexa-based deep sequencing on seed, leaf and petal of safflower produced a de novo transcriptome consisting of 153,769 unigenes. We annotated 82,916 of the unigenes with gene annotation and assigned functional terms and specific pathways to a subset of them. Metabolic pathway analysis revealed that 23 unigenes were predicted to be responsible for the biosynthesis of flavonoids and 8 were characterized as seed-specific oleosins. In addition, a large number of differentially expressed unigenes, for example, those annotated as participating in anthocyanin and chalcone synthesis, were predicted to be involved in flavonoid biosynthesis pathways. In conclusion, the de novo transcriptome investigation of the unique transcripts provided candidate gene resources for studying oleosin-coding genes and for investigating genes related to flavonoid biosynthesis and metabolism in safflower.

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The present study aimed to investigate the subjective stress, salivary cortisol, and electrophysiological responses to psychological stress induced by a modified version of a mental arithmetic task. Fifteen participants were asked to estimate whether the multiplication product of two-decimal numbers was above 10 or not either with a time limit (the stress condition) or without a time limit (the control condition). The results showed that participants reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and negative affect in the stress condition than they did in the control condition. Moreover, the salivary cortisol level continued to increase after the stress condition but exhibited a sharp decrease after the control condition. In addition, the electrophysiological data showed that the amplitude of the frontal-central N1 component was larger for the stress condition than it was for the control condition, while the amplitude of the frontal-central P2 component was larger for the control condition than it was for the stress condition. Our study suggests that the psychological stress characteristics of time pressure and social-evaluative threat caused dissociable effects on perception and on the subsequent attentional resource allocation of visual information.

Researchers have suggested that certain individuals may show a self-positivity bias, rating themselves as possessing more positive personality traits than others. Previous evidence has shown that people evaluate self-related information in such a way as to maintain or enhance self-esteem. However, whether self-esteem would modulate the time course of self-positivity bias in explicit self-evaluation has never been explored. In the present study, 21 participants completed the Rosenberg self-esteem scale and then completed a task where they were instructed to indicate to what extent positive/negative traits described themselves. Behavioral data showed that participants endorsed positive traits as higher in self-relevance compared to the negative traits. Further, participants’ self-esteem levels were positively correlated with their self-positivity bias. Electrophysiological data revealed smaller N1 amplitude and larger late positive component (LPC) amplitude to stimuli consistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-high self-relevant stimuli) when compared to stimuli that were inconsistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-low self-relevant stimuli). Moreover, only in individuals with low self-esteem, the latency of P2 was more pronounced in processing stimuli that were consistent with the self-positivity bias (negative-low self-relevant stimuli) than to stimuli that were inconsistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-low self-relevant stimuli). Overall, the present study provides additional support for the view that low self-esteem as a personality variable would affect the early attentional processing.

BackgroundNonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is characterized by fat accumulation in the hepatocyte, inflammation, liver cell injury, and varying degrees of fibrosis, and can lead to oxidative stress in liver. Here, we investigated whether Salidroside, a natural phenolic antioxidant product, can protect rat from liver injury during NASH.MethodsNASH model was established by feeding the male SD rats with high-fat and high-cholesterol diet for 14 weeks. Four groups of male SD rats including, normal diet control group, NASH model group, and Salidroside treatment group with150mg/kg and 300 mg/kg respectively, were studied. Salidroside was given by oral administration to NASH in rats from 9 weeks to 14 weeks. At the end of 14 weeks, liver and serum were harvested, and the liver injury, oxidative stress and histological features were evaluated.ResultsNASH rats exhibited significant increases in the following parameters as compared to normal diet control rats: fat droplets with foci of inflammatory cell infiltration in the liver. ALT, AST in serum and TG, TC in hepatocyte elevated. Oxidative responsive genes including CYP2E1 and Nox2 increased. Additionally, NASH model decreased antioxidant enzymes SOD, GSH, GPX, and CAT in the liver due to their rapid depletion after battling against oxidative stress. Compared to NASH model group, treatment rats with Salidroside effectively reduced lipid accumulation, inhibited liver injury in a does-dependent manner. Salidroside treatment restored antioxidant enzyme levels, inhibited expression of CYP2E1 and Nox2 mRNA in liver, which prevented the initial step of generating free radicals from NASH.ConclusionThe data presented here show that oral administration of Salidroside prevented liver injury in the NASH model, likely through exerting antioxidant actions to suppress oxidative stress and the free radical–generating CYP2E1 enzyme, Nox2 in liver.

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Processing self-related material recruits similar neural networks regardless of whether the self-relevance is made explicit or not. However, when considering the neural mechanisms that distinctly underlie cognitive and affective components of self-reflection, it is still unclear whether the same mechanisms are involved when self-reflection is explicit or implicit, and how these mechanisms may be modulated by individual personality traits, such as self-esteem. In the present functional MRI study, 25 participants were exposed to positive and negative words that varied with respect to the degree of self-relevance for each participant; however, the participants were asked to make a judgment about the color of the words. Regions-of-interest analysis showed that medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex were associated with gauging the self-relevance of information. However, no main effect of valence or an interaction effect between self-relevance and valence was observed. Further, positive correlations were observed between levels of self-esteem and response within dorsal mPFC (dmPFC) both in the contrast positive-high in self-relevance trials vs positive-low in self-relevance trials and in the contrast negative-low in self-relevance trials vs positive-low in self-relevance trials. These results suggested that the activation of dmPFC may be particularly associated with the processes of self-positivity bias.

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