Anti-inflammatory Activity of Sambucus Plant Bioactive Compounds against TNF-α and TRAIL as Solution to Overcome Inflammation Associated Diseases: The Insight from Bioinformatics Study

Inflammation is the crucial biological process of immune system which acts as body's defense and protective response against the injuries or infection. However, the systemic inflammation devotes the adverse effects such as multiple inflammation associated diseases. One of the best ways to treat this entity is by blocking the tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) to avoid the proinflammation cytokines production. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the potency of Sambucus bioactive compounds as anti-inflammation through in silico approach. In order to assess that, molecular docking was performed to evaluate the interaction properties between the TNF-α or TRAIL with the ligands. The 2D structure of ligands were retrieved online via PubChem and the 3D protein modeling was done by using SWISS Model. The prediction results of the study showed that caffeic acid (−6.4 kcal/mol) and homovanillic acid (−6.6 kcal/mol) have the greatest binding affinity against the TNF-α and TRAIL respectively. This evidence suggests that caffeic acid and homovanillic acid may potent as anti-inflammatory agent against the inflammation associated diseases. Finally, this study needs further examination and evaluation to validate the potency of Sambucus bioactive compounds.

Progress of Bioinformatics Study in DNA Methylation / 生物化学与生物物理进展

DNA methylation is an important epigenetic system. It plays many crucial roles in the gene regulation. With the development of the high-throughput detection techniques, the bioinformatics study has been an active hot topic in the research of DNA methylation. The major achievements and progress on the prediction of DNA methylation status, the mechanism that the majority of CpG islands are resistant to DNA methylation, the relationship between DNA methylation and other epigenetics, as well as the association between aberrant DNA methylation and the tumorigenesis were reviewed in this article.