Light-flavour Baijiu is a type of Chinese liquor with a pure and mild flavour produced by traditional spontaneous solid-state fermentation. The flavour of this liquor has been found to vary in the different periods of annual production. To explore the factors affecting flavour, the microbiota of the surrounding environment, starter and fermentation process in different periods were investigated. Results showed that the ester content and acidity of light-flavour Baijiu were significantly lower when annual production was resumed after a summer break. HCA plot of volatile flavour profile and bacterial PCoA results indicated that the differences occurred at later stages, mainly due to different structures of Lactobacillus. Correlation analysis by O2PLS indicated that Lactobacillus positively correlated with esters. Species-level analysis showed that the lack of L. acetotolerans on the surface of the jar might cause a lag in fermentation and lower ester content. Thereafter, L. acetotolerans was revived during fermentation and enriched on the surface of the jar, which promoted ester formation. As important sources of L. acetotolerans, the air and fermentation jars played a critical role during fermentation. Therefore, this systematic study on environmental microbial ecology is valuable for quality control and to explore environmental microbiota functions during spontaneous fermentation.
Maternal fertility declines irreversibly with aging, and advanced maternal age is mostly related to impaired oocyte quality. The flavonol compound quercetin is considered to be an anti-aging agent due to its cytoprotective actions as an antioxidant. However, its role and mechanisms on aged oocytes are unclear. In this study, the quercetin promotes in vitro maturation (IVM) and early embryonic development of oocytes from aged mice. It is extended these findings in human oocytes, showing that quercetin promotes the IVM rate by 19.6% and increases the blastocyst formation rate by 15.5% compared to untreated controls. The overall oocyte quality of aged mice is improved by quercetin treatment, assessed as spindle/chromosome morphology and cortical granule distribution. Mitochondria is the primary endogenous source of age-related oxidative stress, and an RNA-seq analysis of quercetin-treated oocytes reveals molecular insights including scavenged mitochondrial-ROS, reduced apoptosis, and improved autophagy. Further, this study demonstrates that quercetin reduces ROS via SIRT3-mediated acetylation of SOD2’s K68 residue. Thus, beyond demonstrating that quercetin confers beneficial mitochondria-related impacts in aged oocytes, this study illustrates a potential strategy to prevent or delay oocyte aging and to improve success rates of assisted human reproductive technologies (ART).
This paper provides an efficient and environmentally friendly biochemical degumming method for hemp fiber, which can address the problems of high temperature, high pressure, and extreme pollution of the traditional chemical method and the harsh reaction conditions of biological degumming, such as a long reaction time and pH. In the biochemical method, dilute solutions of alkali pectinase lyase and chemical additives were used to process the hemp fiber and then the fiber composition and structure were investigated. A comparison of the chemical, biological, and biochemical degumming methods shows that the biochemical method can replace the chemical one causing a similar degumming effect, both being better than the biological method. The best proportion of the biochemical solution was found to be 1.5% alkali pectinase lyase, and for chemical auxiliaries the total amount of alkali was ≤0.4% and the total amount of salt was ≤0.8%. The best conditions of the biochemical degumming process were determined to be a bath ratio of 1:10, reaction temperature of 60 °C, and the time of 60 min. After degumming, the composition of the fiber was as follows: lignin 3.69%, pectin 4.09%, hemicellulose 13.34%, and cellulose 78.87%. The fiber quality index of fibers dealt by the biochemical method shows that the linear density was 4.66 dtex, length was 35.6 mm, and fracture strength was 64.5 cN/dtex, which were higher than those treated by the chemical method. This shows that the biological degumming method can be a green degumming method with higher efficiency, lower consumption, and pollution, as well as has a broad application scope.
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