The Donor-Dependent and Colon-Region-Dependent Metabolism of (+)-Catechin by Colonic Microbiota in the Simulator of the Human Intestinal Microbial Ecosystem

The intestinal absorption of dietary catechins is quite low, resulting in most of them being metabolized by gut microbiota in the colon. It has been hypothesized that microbiota-derived metabolites may be partly responsible for the association between catechin consumption and beneficial cardiometabolic effects. Given the profound differences in gut microbiota composition and microbial load between individuals and across different colon regions, this study examined how microbial (+)-catechin metabolite profiles differ between colon regions and individuals. Batch exploration of the interindividual variability in (+)-catechin microbial metabolism resulted in a stratification based on metabolic efficiency: from the 12 tested donor microbiota, we identified a fast- and a slow-converting microbiota that was subsequently inoculated to SHIME, a dynamic model of the human gut. Monitoring of microbial (+)-catechin metabolites from proximal and distal colon compartments with UHPLC-MS and UPLC-IMS-Q-TOF-MS revealed profound donor-dependent and colon-region-dependent metabolite profiles with 5-(3′,4′-dihydroxyphenyl)-γ-valerolactone being the largest contributor to differences between the fast- and slow-converting microbiota and the distal colon being a more important region for (+)-catechin metabolism than the proximal colon. Our findings may contribute to further understanding the role of the gut microbiota as a determinant of interindividual variation in pharmacokinetics upon (+)-catechin ingestion.     

The lack of C2 molecular symmetry in (1R,2R,3S,6S)‐3,6‐di­benzyl­oxycyclo­hex‐4‐ene‐1,2‐diol

The results of a single‐crystal X‐ray experiment and density functional theory calculations performed for the title compound, C₂₀H₂₂O₄, demonstrate that the lowest energy conformation of this mol­ecule does not contain C2 molecular symmetry.     

Oxidation of halides by redox enhanced ferricyanide in the [Fe---CN---Pt]n coordination polymer: an optically triggered process

The mechanism of photolysis for a cyanometalate coordination polymer composed of [(NC)₅Fe^II---CN---Pt^IV(NH₃)₄]_n repeat units, is deduced based on the results of several photogalvanic techniques. These techniques are validated through characterization of the previously established photochemistry of [(NC)₅Fe^II---CN---Pt^IV(NH₃)₄---NC---Fe^II(CN)₅]⁴⁻. Analysis of the polymer photoproducts indicates the presence of iron centers with a redox potential higher than that of the expected photoproduct, ferricyanide. Additionally, the charge collected at the electrode surface is greater than the number of iron centers freed from the polymer network by photolysis. A mechanism based on the creation of oxidized ferricyanide centers with multiple bridging cyanides is proposed. Each bridging cyanide to a Pt center increases the redox potential of the associated ferricyanide center. Ferricyanide centers with a sufficient number of bridging cyanides have redox potentials high enough to oxidize various halides to the corresponding halogen. The ability to convert chloride to chlorine suggests potential applications in the area of solar energy conversion.     

Dual monomer grafting of styrene and maleic anhydride onto model hydrocarbon substrates

Styrene and maleic anhydride (MAn) were successfully grafted, alone and simultaneously, onto various model hydrocarbon substrates at 180 °C with 2,5‐dimethyl‐2,5‐di‐(t‐butyl peroxy)hexane (L101) as a free‐radical initiator. Dodecane, 1‐dodecene, and 2,6,10,14‐tetramethylpentadecane were selected as model compounds to investigate the effects of terminal unsaturation and branching on grafting and crosslinking. These compounds were chosen to mimic the aforementioned microstructural characteristics that are commonly observed in polyethylene. The results demonstrate that terminal unsaturation increases the amount of crosslinked material in the presence of L101. With respect to grafting, for the single monomer systems, MAn prefers to graft as single saturated units, whereas styrene prefers to graft as long chains of polystyrene oligomers. However, when both monomers are grafted simultaneously, graft yields are drastically reduced because of a propensity for the two monomers to form a styrene–maleic anhydride copolymer. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci A: Polym Chem 38: 2456–2468, 2000     

Fermion Condensation: Theory and Experiment

Physics of Atomic Nuclei - Fundamentals of fermion-condensation physics are outlined. Fermion condensation is a phase transition occurring in a strongly correlated Fermi system upon a topological...     

Automated Microbial Library Generation Using the Bioinformatics Platform IDBac

Libraries of microorganisms have served as a cornerstone of therapeutic drug discovery, though the continued re-isolation of known natural product chemical entities has remained a significant obstacle to discovery efforts. A major contributing factor to this redundancy is the duplication of bacterial taxa in a library, which can be mitigated through the use of a variety of DNA sequencing strategies and/or mass spectrometry-informed bioinformatics platforms so that the library is created with minimal phylogenetic, and thus minimal natural product overlap. IDBac is a MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry-based bioinformatics platform used to assess overlap within collections of environmental bacterial isolates. It allows environmental isolate redundancy to be reduced while considering both phylogeny and natural product production. However, manually selecting isolates for addition to a library during this process was time intensive and left to the researcher’s discretion. Here, we developed an algorithm that automates the prioritization of hundreds to thousands of environmental microorganisms in IDBac. The algorithm performs iterative reduction of natural product mass feature overlap within groups of isolates that share high homology of protein mass features. Employing this automation serves to minimize human bias and greatly increase efficiency in the microbial strain prioritization process.     

Surface free energy and bacterial retention to saliva-coated dental implant materials--an in vitro study

The aim of the present investigation was to compare the in vitro bacterial retention on saliva-coated implant materials (pure titanium grade 2 (cp-Ti) and a titanium alloy (Ti–6Al–4V) surfaces), presenting similar surface roughness, and to assess the influence of physico-chemical surface properties of bacterial strain and implant materials on in vitro bacterial adherence. Two bacterial strains (one hydrophilic strain and one hydrophobic strain) were used and the following were evaluated: bacterial cell adherence, SFE values as well as the Lifshitz-van-der Waals, the Lewis acid base components of SFE, the interfacial free energy and the non-dispersive interactions according to two complementary contact angle measurement methods: the sessile drop method and the captive bubble method.

Our results showed similar patterns of adherent bacterial cells on saliva-coated cp-Ti and saliva-coated Ti–6Al–4V. These findings could suggest that bacterial colonization (i.e. plaque formation) is similar on saliva-coated cp-Ti and Ti–6Al–4V surfaces and indicate that both materials could be suitable for use as transgingival abutment or healing implant components. The same physico-chemical properties exhibited by saliva-coated cp-Ti and TA6V, as shown by the sessile drop method and the captive bubble method, could explain this similar bacterial colonisation. Therefore, higher values of total surface free energy of saliva-coated cp-Ti and saliva-coated TA6V samples (γ_SV ≈65 mJ/m²) were reported using the captive bubble method indicating a less hydrophobic character of these surfaces than with the sessile drop method (γ_S ≈44.50 mJ/m²) and consequently possible differences in oral bacterial retention according the theory described by Absolom et al.

The number of adherent hydrophobic S. sanguinis cells was two-fold higher than that of hydrophilic S. constellatus cells. Our results confirm that physico-chemical surface properties of oral bacterial strains play a role in bacterial retention to implant materials in the presence of adsorbed salivary proteins.     

On the indices of curves over local fields

Fix a non-negative integer g and a positive integer I dividing 2g − 2. For any Henselian, discretely valued field K whose residue field is perfect and admits a degree I cyclic extension, we construct a curve C _/K of genus g and index I. This is obtained via a systematic analysis of local points on arithmetic surfaces with semistable reduction. Applications are discussed to the corresponding problem over number fields.