Aloe djiboutiensis: Antioxidant Activity,Molecular Networking-Based Approach and In Vivo Toxicity of This Endemic Species in Djibouti

For the first time, the study of the antioxidant activity, the characterization of the phytoconstituants, and the evaluation of in vitro and in vivo toxicity of A. djiboutiensis leave and latex are performed. The antioxidant activity of both latex (ADL) and the methanolic extract of leaves (ADM) is determined using 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), 2,2′-azino-bis 3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid (ABTS) scavenging radical methods and ferric reducing/antioxidant power (FRAP) assay. The phytochemical study of latex is done using Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and a molecular networking-based approach. The evaluation of in vivo toxicity is performed on mice by oral gavage with a suspension of ADL. Our results show that weak antioxidant activity of ADL and ADM in opposition to their high polyphenol, 83.01 mg and 46.4 mg expressed in gallic acid equivalent (GAE)/g of dry weight (DW), respectively, and flavonoid contents 13.12 mg and 4.25 mg expressed in quercetin equivalent (QE)/g dry weight (DW), respectively. Using the Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) website, nine (9) anthraquinones derivatives, ten (10) chromones derivatives, two (2) flavonols/ chromones isomers are annotated in the molecular network. The treated mice do not display abnormalities in their general physical appearance and biochemistry parameters, compared to the controls. Only glucose and calcium levels are slightly higher in male treated mice compared to the vehicles.     

Heart Failure and PAHs,OHPAHs, and Trace Elements Levels in Human Serum: Results from a Preliminary Pilot Study in Greek Population and the Possible Impact of Air Pollution

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) have been associated with environmental pollutants. The scope of this study is to assess any potential relation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), their hydroxylated derivatives, and trace elements with heart failure via their direct determination in human serum of Greek citizens residing in different areas. Therefore, we analyzed 131 samples including cases (heart failure patients) and controls (healthy donors), and the respective demographic data were collected. Significantly higher concentrations (p < 0.05) were observed in cases’ serum regarding most of the examined PAHs and their derivatives with phenanthrene, fluorene, and fluoranthene being the most abundant (median of >50 μg L⁻¹). Among the examined trace elements, As, Cd, Cu, Hg, Ni, and Pb were measured at statistically higher concentrations (p < 0.05) in cases’ samples, with only Cr being significantly higher in controls. The potential impact of environmental factors such as smoking and area of residence has been evaluated. Specific PAHs and trace elements could be possibly related with heart failure development. Atmospheric degradation and smoking habit appeared to have a significant impact on the analytes’ serum concentrations. PCA–logistic regression analysis could possibly reveal common mechanisms among the analytes enhancing the hypothesis that they may pose a significant risk for CVD development.     

Bulk derivatization and cation exchange restricted access media-based trap-and-elute liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry method for determination of trace estrogens in serum

Estrone (E1), estradiols (α/β-E2), and estriol (E3) are four major metabolically active estrogens exerting strong biological activities at very low circulating concentrations. This paper reports a sensitive and efficient method with automated, on-line clean-up and detection to determine trace estrogens in a small volume of serum samples using liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization–tandem mass spectrometry directly, without off-line liquid–liquid or solid-phase extraction pretreatments. Serum aliquots (charcoal stripped fetal bovine serum, 100 μL) were spiked with four estrogen standards and their corresponding isotope-labeled internal standards, then bulk derivatized with 2-fluoro-1-methyl-pyridium p-toluenesulfonate (2-FMP) to establish the calibration curves and perform method validation. Calibration was established in the concentration ranges of 5–1000 pg mL⁻¹, and demonstrated good linearity of R² from 0.9944 to 0.9997 for the four derivatized estrogens. The lower detection limits obtained were 3–7 pg mL⁻¹. Good accuracy and precision in the range of 86–112% and 2.3–11.9%, respectively, were observed for the quality control (QC) samples at low, medium, and high concentration levels. The stability tests showed that the derivatized serum samples were stable 8 h after derivatization at room temperature and at least to 48 h if stored at −20 °C. The method was applied to measure trace estrogens in real human and bovine serum samples, and three of four estrogen compounds studied were observed and quantified.     

Coumarine–imino–C2-glucosyl conjugate as receptor for Cu in blood serum milieu,on silica gel sheet and in Hep G2 cells and the characterization of the species of recognition

A coumarine–imino–C2-glucosyl conjugate (L) was synthesized and characterized. The conjugate L is found to recognize Cu²⁺ in aqueous HEPES buffer by exhibiting a 95% fluorescence quenching in pH range 7–10 even in the presence of several biologically and ecologically relevant metal ions. Fluorescence on–off behavior has been clearly demonstrated on the basis of the binding variability of Cu²⁺ to L. The binding has been elicited through the changes observed in fluorescence, absorption, ESI-MS and ¹H NMR titrations. All the other thirteen metal ions studied did not show any change in the fluorescence emission. These ions do not interfere with the recognition of Cu²⁺ by L. The structural features of [CuL]₂ complex in both the isomeric forms were established by DFT computational calculations. The utility of L has been demonstrated by showing its sensitivity toward Cu²⁺ on a thin layer of silica gel. The L gives sensitive fluorescence signals for Cu²⁺ even in blood serum and exhibits appropriate fluorescence responses in living cells.     

Analysis of peptides and protein digests by reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry using neutral pH elution conditions

In this study, the advantages of carrying out the analysis of peptides and tryptic digests of proteins under gradient elution conditions at pH 6.5 by reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) and in-line electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) are documented. For these RP separations, a double endcapped, bidentate anchored n-octadecyl wide pore silica adsorbent was employed in a capillary column format. Compared to the corresponding analysis of the same peptides and protein tryptic digests using low pH elution conditions for their RP-HPLC separation, this alternative approach provides improved selectivity and more efficient separation of these analytes, thus allowing a more sensitive identification of proteins at different abundance levels, i.e. more tryptic peptides from the same protein could be confidently identified, enabling higher sequence coverage of the protein to be obtained. This approach was further evaluated with very complex tryptic digests derived from a human plasma protein sample using an online two-dimensional (2D) strong cation-exchange (SCX)-RP-HPLC-ESI-MS/MS system. Again, at pH 6.5, with mobile phases of different compositions, improved chromatographic selectivities were obtained, concomitant with more sensitive on-line electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometric (ESI-MS/MS) analysis. As a consequence, more plasma proteins could be confidently identified, highlighting the potential of these RP-HPLC methods with elution at pH 6.5 to extend further the scope of proteomic investigations.     

电致化学发光法高灵敏度测定血清中的辛可宁

利用金电极为工作电极,研究了辛可宁-Ru(bpy)2+3体系的电致化学发光行为。研究表明,辛可宁对Ru(bpy)2+3在电极表面的电致化学发光具有显著的增强作用,据此建立了一种高灵敏度测定辛可宁的电致化学发光分析方法。考察了硼酸-硼砂缓冲溶液的浓度、p H值、联吡啶钌浓度、光电倍增管电压等参数对实验的影响。在12 mmol/L硼酸-硼砂缓冲溶液(p H 9.0)中,辛可宁浓度的对数lgc在3.0×10-9~6.0×10-6mol/L范围内与Ru(bpy)2+3的电致化学发光强度变化值(ΔI)呈线性关系,检出限(S/N=3)为1.76×10-10mol/L。应用此法对血清中辛可宁的浓度进行测试,加标回收率为102.1%~109.5%。     

冠心病患者血脂分析与HCY测定的临床应用

目的通过研究并分析出冠心病患者的血脂组成成分,然后通过使用HCY测定的方法测定冠心病患者血清中的同型半胱氨酸含量的实际临床应用。方法 50例患有冠心病的患者和50名健康人员的血清成分中同型半胱氨酸含量,其中治疗组有25例无心肌梗塞的冠心病患者,其余25例研究对象均为有心肌梗塞患者,然后对治疗组患者的血脂组成成分进行测定并分析比较出异常成分。结果通过研究后发现治疗组的研究对象血清中的同型半胱氨酸含量远多于对照组的50例健康人员血清中的同型半胱氨酸含量,其中25例治疗组心肌梗塞患者的同型半胱氨酸含量多于25例治疗组的无心肌梗塞患者的同型半胱氨酸含量,具有统计学意义。冠心病患者的血脂组成成分Apo B100的值增加,冠心病患者的Apo A1的值和Apo A1与Apo B100的比值均减小,经统计学分析得出,具有统计学意义。结论血清同型半胱氨酸的含量改变,以及血脂中Apo B100的值和Apo A1的值与Apo B100的比值发生改变对治疗诊断与预防冠心病都有十分重要的价值。     

Different classification algorithms and serum surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy for noninvasive discrimination of gastric diseases

In this study, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) was used to investigate the spectral characteristics of blood serum for the purpose of diagnosing stomach diseases. SERS spectral data was collected from patients with atrophic gastritis, both pre‐operation and post‐operation gastric cancer, and from healthy individuals. Visual differences in the SERS spectra were observed between the four groups which indicate corresponding biomolecule concentration changes in blood. To further investigate the diagnostic ability of human serum, the spectral data was analyzed with three chemometric processes. These three methods extracted features and classified from the spectral data. Principal component analysis (PCA) was first performed to reduce the dimensionality of the original spectral data. Then, the classification methods support vector machine (SVM), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and classification and regression tree (CART) were used for the evaluation of diagnostic ability. Accuracies of 96.5%, 88.8% and 87.1% were obtained for PCA‐SVM, PCA‐LDA and PCA‐CART, respectively. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SURFACE-HYPERBRANCHED MAGNETITE NANOPARTICLE FOR BOVINE SERUM ALBUMIN IMMOBILIZATION

A hyperbranched polyamidoamine polymer was synthesized on the surface of magnetite nanoparticles to enhance bovine serum albumin (BSA) immobilization efficiency. The amount of immobilized bovine serum albumin (BSA) on the surface-hyperbranched magnetite nanoparticle was up to 2.5 times as much as that of magnetite nanoparticle modified with only amino silane.