Oxidative stress is the redox imbalance state of organisms that involves in a variety of biological processes of diseases. Limonium aureum (L.) Hill. is an excellent wild plant resource in northern China, which has potential application value for treating oxidative stress. However, there are few studies that focused on the antioxidant effect and related mechanism of L. aureum. Thus, the present study combining systematic network pharmacology and molecular biology aimed to investigate the antioxidant effects of L. aureum and explore its underlying anti-oxidation mechanisms. First, the antioxidant activity of L. aureum extracts was confirmed by in vitro and intracellular antioxidant assays. Then, a total of 11 bioactive compounds, 102 predicted targets, and 70 antioxidant-related targets were obtained from open source databases. For elucidating the molecular mechanisms of L. aureum, the PPI network and integrated visualization network based on bioinformatics assays were constructed to preliminarily understand the active compounds and related targets. The subsequent enrichment analysis results showed that L. aureum mainly affect the biological processes involving oxidation-reduction process, response to drug, etc., and the interference with these biological processes might be due to the simultaneous influence on multiple signaling pathways, including the HIF-1 and ERBB signaling pathways. Moreover, the mRNA levels of predicted hub genes were measured by qRT-PCR to verify the regulatory effect of L. aureum on them. Collectively, this finding lays a foundation for further elucidating the anti-oxidative damage mechanism of L. aureum and promotes the development of therapeutic drugs for oxidative stress.

Background This study investigated the effects of terpinen-4-ol on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and its biofilm, and the possible mechanisms governing this effect. Results We observed that terpinen-4-ol has good antibacterial activity and inhibits the formation of MRSA biofilm. The MIC and MBC values for terpinen-4-ol against S. aureus were 0.08% ~ 0.32%. And terpinen-4-ol at 0.32% could kill all bacteria and clear all biofilms. Untargeted metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses showed that terpinen-4-ol strongly inhibited DNA and RNA biosynthesis in MRSA at 2 h after treatment by affecting genes and metabolites related to purine and pyrimidine metabolic pathways. Some differential genes which play important roles in DNA synthesis and the production of eDNA from biofilm exposed to terpinen-4-ol was also significantly decreased compared with that of the control. Conclusions Terpinen-4-ol has good antibacterial activity and significantly inhibits the formation of MRSA biofilm by inhibiting purine and pyrimidine metabolism.

The fruits of Ailanthus altissima Swingle (AS) possess a variety of pharmacological activities. Its antioxidant activity and the potential mode of action have not yet been investigated. In in vitro studies, AS revealed the strong reducing power and DPPH scavenging effect, but hydroxyl radical scavenging activity and ferrous ions-chelating ability were not strong. Meanwhile, the oxidative stress RAW264.7 cell injury model was established, the low and medium-doses of AS showed significant protective effects on the viability of H2O2-treated cells by CCK-8 method. Besides, three doses of AS all increased the activities of SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px and decreased the MDA level compared with the H2O2 group, suggesting it significantly relieved oxidative stress of cells. The active ingredients and related targets of AS were collected by HERB and Swiss Target Prediction database, the common targets of drugs and diseases database were conducted by GeneCards database platform and the Venny platform. We screened the core targets of AS like threonine kinase1 (AKT1), mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAPK1), sirtuin-1 (SIRT1), mechanistic target of rapamycin kinase (MTOR) by STRING database, and the key pathways involved PI3K-AKT and FoxO signaling pathway by KEGG pathway enrichment analysis. Besides, qRT-PCR revealed AS preconditioning significantly up-regulated the expression level of AKT1, SIRT1, MAPK1, and MTOR in model cells, and the effect was related to the regulation of FoxO and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. In summary, AS showed significant antioxidant activity and its potential mechanism was regulating FoxO and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.

Background: This study investigated the effects of terpinen-4-ol on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and its biofilm, and the possible mechanisms governing this effect.Results: We observed that terpinen-4-ol has good antibacterial activity and inhibits the formation of MRSA biofilm. The MIC and MBC values for terpinen-4-ol against S. aureus were 0.08%~0.32%. And terpinen-4-ol at 0.32% could kill all bacteria and clear all biofilms. Untargeted metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses showed that terpinen-4-ol strongly inhibited DNA and RNA biosynthesis in MRSA at 2 h after treatment by affecting genes and metabolites related to purine and pyrimidine metabolic pathways. Some differential genes which play important roles in DNA synthesis and the production of eDNA from biofilm exposed to terpinen-4-ol was also significantly decreased compared with that of the control. Conclusions: Terpinen-4-ol has good antibacterial activity and significantly inhibits the formation of MRSA biofilm by inhibiting purine and pyrimidine metabolism.

Toluene insolubles (TI) are recognized as coking precursors produced at the initial stage of a thermal reaction. The traditional methods can only give the overall yield of TI; however, more detailed information, such as the size distribution and the shape parameters of TI, cannot be provided. In the present work, a new visual test method for the TI in oil products was developed based on the digital microscopic image processing technology and the statistical method. This method can give the overall yields of TI and provide the particle size distribution and the shape parameters. The optimized test conditions were determined by investigating the influencing factors. The calibration results of this method showed that the relative error of volume concentration is 5% and the overall error of particle size distribution is less than 5%. Moreover, the detectable concentration of this method is much lower than that of the traditional methods.

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The results demonstrate that Durimide has good biocompatibility with retinal cell lines CRL and RF/6A. In conclusion, while further in vitro and in vivo studies are required to clarify long-term effects, Durimide is indicated as a promising material with suitable biocompatibility for retinal implants.