Scope: Angelica keiskei is associated with several health benefits, but little is known about the effect of A. keiskei juice (AKJ), which is rich in polyphenols, coumarins, and other healthful agents, on high-fat diet-induced obesity or its relationship with intestinal microbiota composition changes. Methods and results: C57BL/6 mice are fed either a normal diet (ND group; n = 8), a high-fat diet (HFD group; n = 8), or a high-fat diet supplemented with AKJ (AKJ group; n = 8) for 10 weeks. The results show that AKJ prevents weight gain, lowered fat accumulation, blood glucose, serum lipid levels, hepatic steatosis, and modulates the level of expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism in mice with obesity. AKJ is found to normalize HFD-induced gut dysbiosis. Particularly, AKJ ameliorates HFD-dependent changes in the relative abundance of several taxa back to normal status (e.g., AKJ increased Bacteroides and decreased Mollicutes RF9, Ruminococcaceae UCG-014, Faecalibacterium, and Lactobacillus). Spearman's correlation analysis reveals that those genera are closely correlated with body weight, fasting serum glucose, and serum lipid levels. Conclusion: The results show that consumption of phytochemical-rich AKJ may prevent HFD-induced obesity and metabolic disorders via changes in metabolic genes and gut microbiota composition.

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) leaf is a natural source of phenolic compounds with strong antioxidant activity and potential utility as an antioxidant. The aim of this study was to evaluate the polyphenol composition and antioxidant activities of ethanol extracts and their various solvent-partitioned fractions (petroleum ether, ethyl acetate, and aqueous fraction) from sweet potato leaves and petioles. Seven caffeoylquinic acid (CQA) derivatives and four flavonoids were detected in sweet potato leaves by HPLC-ESI-MS. The total phenolic content (TPC) and total flavonoid content (TFC) in leaf (112.98 ± 4.14 mg gallic acid equivalent (GAE)/g of dried extract, 56.87 ± 5.69 mg rutin equivalent (RE)/g of dried extract) was more than ten times higher than in petiole (9.22 ± 2.67 mg GAE/g of dried extract, 3.81 ± 0.52 mg RE/g of dried extract). The antioxidant contents of ethyl acetate fractions increased dramatically relative to those of crude extracts for both leaves and petioles. Purification using solvent partition with ethyl acetate increased TPC and TFC of crude extracts, especially the CQA derivatives including 3,4-dicaffeoylquinic acid, 3,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid, 4,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid, and 3,4,5-tricaffeoylquinic acid. Meanwhile, the ethyl acetate fractions with the highest CQA content were associated with the highest scavenging activities towards 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and higher ferric ion reducing antioxidant power (FRAP)-reducing power.Foods 2020, 9, 15 2 of 14 antioxidant power (FRAP)-reducing power was almost 6.14, 3.37, and 9.43 times higher than that of the common vegetables like spinach, broccoli, and green cabbage, respectively [12]. In addition, the cellular and in vivo pharmacological evaluation of sweet potato leaf extract exhibited a wide range of health-promoting biological activities including antioxidative, anticancer, antibacterial, antidiabetic, and anti-inflammation [9,[13][14][15]. Sweet potato leaves are thus nutritional and functional foods.Currently, 95-98% of sweet potato leaves in China are discarded as waste with low value; the remaining 2-5% are mainly used for livestock [16], which leads to a huge waste of resources and creates environmental pollution problems. However, sweet potato leaves are excellent raw materials for the isolation of phenolic compounds, which demonstrate high antioxidant activity and can be incorporated into food products as nutritional supplements [17], food preservatives [18], and/or natural antioxidants [19]. In this context, recovery of these widely available and low-cost phenolic sources from sweet potato leaves could not only improve their added value, but also solve the ecological problem that these residues cause. It is thus essential to explore extraction processes to obtain maximum yields of these substances. Fu et al. [19] found that the type of extracting solvents greatly impacts the recovery and antioxidant activities of sweet potato leaf polyphenols: 50% (v/v) acetone and 70% ethanol are efficient solvents to recover polyphenols ...

Ice plant extract (IPE), a rich source of d-pinitol, has a substantial effect on ameliorating hyperglycemia and modulating gut microbiota composition in diabetic GK (Goto-Kakizaki) rats.

No abstract

Hericium erinaceus polysaccharides (HEPs) have attracted widespread attention in regulating gut microbiota (GM). To investigate digestibility and fermentation of HEPs and their effects on GM composition, three polysaccharide fractions, namely, HEP-30, HEP-50, and HEP-70, were fractionally precipitated with 30%, 50%, and 70% ethanol concentrations (v/v) from hot water-soluble extracts of Hericium erinaceus, respectively. Three kinds of prepared HEPs were structurally characterized and simulated gastrointestinal digestion, and their effects on human fecal microbiota fermentations of male and female and short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production in vitro were clarified. Under digestive conditions simulating saliva, stomach, and small intestine, HEPs were not significantly influenced and safely reached the distal intestine. After 24 h of in vitro fermentation, the content of SCFAs was significantly enhanced (p < 0.05), and the retention rates of total and reducing sugars and pH value were significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Thus, HEPs could be utilized by GM, especially HEP-50, and enhanced the relative abundance of SCFA-producing bacteria, e.g., Bifidobacterium, Faecalibacterium, Blautia, Butyricicoccus, and Lactobacillus. Furthermore, HEPs reduced the relative abundances of opportunistic pathogenic bacteria, e.g., Escherichia-Shigella, Klebsiella, and Enterobacter. This study suggests that gradual ethanol precipitation is available for the preparation of polysaccharides from Hericium erinaceus, and the extracted polysaccharide could be developed as functional foods with great development value.

No abstract

The silkworm, Bombyx mori, has been used as an important bioreactor for the production of recombinant proteins through baculovirus expression system (BES). There are several problems which will probably be the bottleneck for practical and industrial utilization of silkworm bioreactor. Traditionally, the recombinant virus should infect the larvae through individual dorsal injection by a syringe. This is a time- and labor-consuming procedure. This drawback has become a bottleneck for practical and industrial utilization of baculovirus expression system in the silkworm bioreactor. In this paper, we constructed a dual expression baculovirus to express the renovated polyhedron and target manganese superoxide dismutase (SOD) gene under P10 and polyhedron promoters, respectively, through oral infection. The results showed that the direct injection of recombinant rBacmid/BmNPV/SOD DNA with cellfectin reagent infected the silkworm larvae partially. When next batches of larvae were fed orally with hemolymph, which was collected from first batch of injected and infected larvae, the obvious symptom of infection was found and high target SOD was expressed. These results imply it is feasible to express target genes through combination of recombinant bacmid DNA injection and oral feeding by a dual expression bacmid baculovirus.

The complete coding sequence of manganese superoxide dismutase (Mn-SOD) of Trichinella pseudospiralis (Tp) was obtained and characterized for the first time by degenerative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid amplification of complementary DNA ends (RACE) reactions. The open reading frame of Tp Mn-SOD contained 663 nucleotides, encoding 220 amino acid residues. This included the conserved histidine and aspartate residues for metal binding, cysteine residues for disulfide bond formation, and arginine residue for directing the superoxide ion to the protein. The presence of mitochondrial transit peptides and maturation cleavage site suggest that the cloned Tp Mn-SOD gene is a mitochondrial enzyme. It is a single copy gene containing three introns. Northern blotting suggested that the expression level of Mn-SOD is lower than Cu/Zn SOD in infective stage larvae. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR demonstrated that a single dominant transcript of Tp Mn-SOD was highly expressed in the infective-stage larvae but not in adult worms. The information provides a better understanding of the highly compartmentalized superoxide dismutases of adenophorean nematodes.