Metabolomic-based investigation of Yinlan alleviating hyperlipidemia by inhibiting blood stasis and phlegm turbidity through the PXR-CYP3A4-ABCB1-FXR pathway

Yinlan lipid regulatory capsule (YL) is a composite traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) new drug to alleviate hyperlipidemia, while its therapeutic mechanism in vivo was not clarified with nontargeted metabolomics investigation. An animal model was established in rats fed a high-fat diet, and their body weights, body mass index (BMI) and blood cholesterol levels were measured. Serum, liver and kidney tissue samples were also extracted for PXR-CYP3A4-ABCB1-FXR signaling pathway research using PCR and UHPLC–MS. The obtained plasma samples were analyzed by UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS metabolomic investigation, which revealed PXR-CYP3A4-related metabolites and changes induced by YL. Finally, the key metabolites were chosen as index components, and their levels in the serum, liver, small intestine and bile were used for simultaneous UHPLC–MS-MS determination. The results indicated that YL was effective in rebalancing blood TG and TC levels (compared to controls). With respect to the PXR-CYP3A4-ABCB1 pathway, as a result of YL’s effect, gene expression or activity of the two targets decreased significantly in both the liver and kidney. The same trend was observed in the serum samples mentioned above. Metabolomics screening and data revealed that 44 metabolites can be regarded as biomarkers related to hyperlipidemia, fatty acids synthesis, and body energy consumption, as well as synthesis, transportation and exertion of cholesterol. YL’s treatment focused on 26 of them, primarily bile acids, indicating that the antihyperlipidemic effect of this drug lies in its inhibitory activity of cholesterol metabolism. Subsequent analysis of those in vivo components revealed that significant increases (compared to the model group) occurred in the blood, liver, small intestine and bile in groups that received medium and high doses of YL (while the low dose was relatively unchanged). Those target components exhibit a close relationship with PXR and/or CYP3A4. The use of YL repressed PXR expression and subsequently decreased CYP3A4 activity. As a result, synthesis of related bile acids increased, while cholesterol levels decreased, consequently leading to the attenuation of hyperlipidemia. This study comprehensively investigated the antihyperlipidemia mechanism of YL based on its repression of PXR-CYP3A4 activity and related metabolite yield, establishing an accurate method for evaluating the therapeutic effect of YL.     

氢部分选择性催化还原NO反应研究

在低钯含量活性非均布Pd/Al2O3催化剂上，实现了富氧条件下，氢部分选择性催化还原NO过程，低温、富氧条件下NO的转化率高达80％－100％。NO直接分解实验表明，600℃，NO分解转化率在无氧时为17．3％，有0．5％氧存在时接近于0。氢非选择性还原NO条件下，100℃以下，NO转化率为100％。根据实验结果及文献，推测了氢部分选择性还原NO过程中可能存在的反应，不同的反应温度下，NO脱除反应有所不同。在115℃以下，NO还原产物为NH3；115℃－155℃，NO还原产物为NH3、N2O和N2；155℃以上，NO还原产物中无NH3存在。NO还原反应与氢氧反应是平行的竞争反应。     

Some chemical transformations of the neo-clerodane diterpene teubotrin

Starting from the natural neo-clerodane diterpenoid teubotrin (1) several neo-clerodane derivatives (3-7,9-11) have been obtained. The naturally occurring diterpenoid teuscordinon (12) has also been synthesized from teubotrin (1), showing thereby how some of these transformations can be useful for the synthesis of other natural neo-clerodane diterpenes. The latter are of interest due to their activity as insect antifeedants and other important biological properties.     

Liquid structure of vanadium tetrachloride from neutron diffraction study

Assuming the separation of the intermolecular scattering function into the radial and angular parts and using Egelstaffet al’s orientational model for tetrachlorides, the structure of liquid vanadium tetrachloride has been studied. It has been observed that such a separation is approximate for this liquid and the introduction of a third correction term is required to account for the molecular structure function. The chlorine-chlorine partial structure and effective angleaveraged intermolecular chlorine-chlorine potential in the liquid has been evaluated. Without taking the third correction term, introduced to generate theoretically the molecular structure function, the centre structure function has been obtained in an approximate way from the experimentally observed molecular structure function and from it the centre radial distribution function, centre direct correlation function and the angle-averaged vanadium-vanadium effective potential has been evaluated.     

胶束增溶光度法同时测定铂、铑、钯和金的研究

本文研究了贵金属Pt、Rh、Pd和Au在SnCl_2-BRB-AG-乳化剂OP离子缔合物体系中显色反应的条件,采用偏最小二乘回归法对上述体系重迭光谱进行解析及数据处理。结果表明,该体系灵敏度高,表观摩尔吸光系数可达1.74×10～6～2.47×10～6L·mol～-1·cm～-1;体系稳定性较好。应用本文方法对混合试样中Pt、Rh、Pd、Au进行同时测定,取得较满意的结果。     

Fermentation characteristics and the dynamic trend of chemical components during fermentation of Massa Medicata Fermentata

As a representative of traditionally fermented Chinese medicine, Massa Medicata Fermentata (MMF) shows the functions of invigorating the spleen and stomach and promoting digestion, which plays an important role in the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases. The fermentation mechanism and the key factors that affect the quality of MMF have not been revealed yet, which has become an urgent issue that limits its clinical application. This article aims to systematically and comprehensively reveal the transformation of physical properties and the dynamic trend of chemical components including substrate components, volatile components, and lactic acid as anaerobic fermentation product during MMF fermentation. Along with obvious hyphae growth observed for MMF, the weight of MMF decreased, and the moisture and temperature increased. Through the quantified 14 components from substrate, ferulic acid increased from 45.53 ± 6.94 to 141.89 ± 78.40 μg/g, while glycosides and phenolic acids declined except caffeic acid. Also, within the 66 volatile components analyzed, alcohols and acids increased, while aldehydes and ketones decreased. Lactic acid was not detected in the fermentation substrate, but an apparent increase in lactic acid content was observed along with the increased fermentation days, resulting in 2.54 ± 0.15 mg/g on day 8. Based on the tested components, the fermentation process of MMF was discriminated into three distinct stages by principal component analysis, and an optimal fermentation time of four days was proposed. The results of this study will be of great significance to clarify the characteristics of fermentation and conduce to improving quality standards of MMF.     

Limits of One-dimensional Interacting Particle Systems with Two-scale Interaction*

This paper characterizes the limits of a large system of interacting particles distributed on the real line. The interaction occurring among neighbors involves two kinds of independent actions with different rates. This system is a generalization of the voter process, of which each particle is of type A or a. Under suitable scaling, the local proportion functions of A particles converge to continuous functions which solve a class of stochastic partial differential equations driven by Fisher-Wrig...     

Molar heat capacities and volumes of transfer of cytosine,thymine, caffeine and 1,3-diethylthymine to aqueous solutions of glycyl-glycine and L-α-alanyl-L-α-alanine at 25°C

Densities and specific heat capacities of ternary aqueous systems containing dipeptides (glycyl-glycine or L--alanyl-L--alanine) and nucleic acid bases (cytosine or thymine) or their alkyl derivatives (1,3-diethylthymine or caffeine) were determined at 25°C by flow calorimetry and flow densimetry. The partial molar volumes and heat capacities of transfer at infinite dilution of the different nucleic acid bases from water to water+dipeptide solutions were obtained therefrom. Except for the case of the transfer of cytosine to aqueous glycyl-glycine solutions where a small positive dependence of the transfer quantities was observed with the dipeptide concentration, the values of the heat capacities of transfer were in general low, positive or negative, depending on the compensation of hydrophobic-hydrophilic interactions between the dipeptide and the base. The volumes of transfer of most of the bases are very small, within the limit of the experimental error.     

Generalized solutions of a stochastic partial differential equation

We discuss the Cauchy problem of a certain stochastic parabolic partial differential equation arising in the nonlinear filtering theory, where the initial data and the nonhomogeneous noise term of the equation are given by Schwartz distributions. The generalized (distributional) solution is represented by a partial (conditional) generalized expectation ofT(t)° _0,t ^–1 , whereT(t) is a stochastic process with values in distributions and _s,t is a stochastic flow generated by a certain stochastic differential equation. The representation is used for getting estimates of the solution with respect to Sobolev norms.Further, by applying the partial Malliavin calculus of Kusuoka-Stroock, we show that any generalized solution is aC -function under a condition similar to Hörmander's hypoellipticity condition.     

A new heuristic algorithm solving the linear ordering problem

The linear ordering problem is an NP-hard combinatorial problem with a large number of applications. Contrary to another very popular problem from the same category, the traveling salesman problem, relatively little space in the literature has been devoted to the linear ordering problem so far. This is particularly true for the question of developing good heuristic algorithms solving this problem.In the paper we propose a new heuristic algorithm solving the linear ordering problem. In this algorithm we made use of the sorting through insertion pattern as well as of the operation of permutation reversal. The surprisingly positive effect of the reversal operation, justified in part theoretically and confirmed in computational examples, seems to be the result of a unique property of the problem, called in the paper the symmetry of the linear ordering problem. This property consists in the fact that if a given permutation is an optimal solution of the problem with the criterion function being maximized, then the reversed permutation is a solution of the problem with the same criterion function being minimized.