Quantification of Selected Bioactive Compounds in Instant Coffee and Their Effect on Gastric Release using HGT-1 Cells

@#Introduction: This study was carried out to quantify the selected bioactive compounds (i.e., chlorogenic acids, caffeine, and N-methylpyridinium) in instant coffee and to analyze its correlation with the gastric release effect of the HGT-1 cell line. Methods: Selected bioactive compounds in regular (REG), low sugar (LS), low fat (LF), white coffee (WC), white coffee low acid (WCA), decaffeinated (DC), and instant black coffee (BC) were quantified using HPLCDAD (high-performance liquid chromatography diode array detection) system and flow cytometry analysis for its gastric release effect when treated with HGT-1 cell. Results: The HPLC data showed the content of caffeine (60,212 ± 212 µg/ml) and chlorogenic acid (35,779 ± 3027 µg/ml) were significantly high in BC while the lowest caffeine value was found in DC coffee. Chlorogenic acid in other instant coffee samples showed insignificant content distinctions. As for N-methylpyridinium (NMP), the highest content was found in BC (565 µg/ml) and the lowest value was detected in WC (52 µg/ml) coffee. Gastric release activity by HGT-1 cells was significantly higher in DC and REG coffee treatment. Pearson correlation showed no significant correlation between the quantitative data and gastric release activity by HGT-1 cells. Conclusion: The selected bioactive compounds contained in instant coffees were unable to stimulate gastric release.

Study of Effect of Shavasana on Handgrip and Cold Pressor Test on Heart Rate and Blood Pressure in Young Adults.

Shavasana or a corpse pose is the final pose of a yoga flow. When practiced regularly it is known to restore the body and mind. Aim of our present study was to investigate the effects of shavasana on handgrip and cold pressor test on heart rate and blood pressure in apparently healthy young adults. In today’s world all of us are under constant stress and majority of individuals with sedentary lifestyle suffer from hypertension and each of us react differently to varied internal and external stimuli.METHODSFor convenience, we took 300 apparently healthy medical students of both sexes in the age group of 18 to 22 years and a comparative study was carried out among them. Their basal pulse and BP were recorded from dominant hand. For Hand Grip Test (HGT) handgrip dynamometer (INCO) was used by left hand, and pulse and BP from right hand was recorded and similarly Cold Pressor Test (CPT) was carried out by immersing left hand up to wrist joint in cold water mixed with ice cubes to maintain temperature at 40C and pulse and BP was recorded from right hand. Shavasana was performed for 15 minutes by lying down on the wooden couch, with eyes closed and lying on back, keeping arms six inches away from the body and legs and feet “drop” open and palms facing upwards and concentrating on their breathing, after which pulse and BP was recorded. This was carried out for a period of 30 days.RESULTSData was collected and analysed using paired ‘t’ test and paired differences were calculated using 95% confidence interval of the difference and p value of < 0.05 was taken as scientifically significant. In our study we found that there is significant decrease in basal pulse rate, when compared with CPT, immediately and after performing shavasana for a period of one month, and there was significant increase in pulse rate following HGT (p< 0.001) (table 1 and graph 1). Compared to basal, SBP and DBP, it was observed that there is significant decrease; immediately and after performing shavasana for one month and significant increase with HGT and CPT was observed (p<0.001) (table 1 and graph 1).CONCLUSIONSThere is a significant decrease in basal pulse rate, when compared with CPT, immediately and after performing shavasana for a period of one month, and there was significant increase in pulse rate following HGT (p< 0.001) (table 1 and graph 1). Compared to basal, SBP and DBP it was observed that there is significant decrease; immediately and after performing shavasana for one month and significant increase with HGT and CPT was observed (p<0.001) (table 1 and graph 1).

Effect of Body Mass Index on Cardiac Autonomic Functional Status in Healthy Young Adults

Introduction: Autonomic nervous system (ANS) is involvedin energy metabolism and regulation of the cardiovascularsystem. Autonomic dysfunction has been suggested tooccur in obese individuals in both adults and children but acomprehensive study of the autonomic status in young adultsis scant. So aim of the study was to evaluate and comparecardiovascular autonomic functions in young adults on thebasis of BMI.Material and methods: 150 healthy young students of MMUaged 18–25 years, divided into four groups based on BMI asper Asian criteria (underweight, normal weight, overweightand obese). Various autonomic function tests done were Lyingto Standing test, Valsalva manoeuvre, Hand grip test (HGT)and Cold pressor test (CPT).Results: The mean baseline SBP and DBP were significantlyhigher in obese subjects followed by overweight, normalweight and under weight. No parasympathetic alterationbetween different BMI groups was seen. Mean values ofresting SBP and DBP were significantly higher and bloodpressure response to HGT and CPT was significantly lower inobese as compared to normal weight subjects.Conclusion: Our study revealed an altered autonomicfunction in the form of impaired sympathetic activity withno parasympathetic modulation in obese young adults. Soweight reduction and moderate intensity aerobic exerciseprogrammes should be incorporated into daily living, whichmay delay or prevent the onset of hypertension.

Multiple gene sequence analysis using genes of the bacterial DNA repair pathway

The ability to recognize and repair abnormal DNA structures is common to all forms of life. Physiological studies and genomic sequencing of a variety of bacterial species have identified an incredible diversity of DNA repair pathways. Despite the amount of available genes in public database, the usual method to place genomes in a taxonomic context is based mainly on the 16S rRNA or housekeeping genes. Thus, the relationships among genomes remain poorly understood. In this work, an approach of multiple gene sequence analysis based on genes of DNA repair pathway was used to compare bacterial genomes. Housekeeping and DNA repair genes were searched in 872 completely sequenced bacterial genomes. Seven DNA repair and housekeeping genes from distinct metabolic pathways were selected, aligned, edited and concatenated head-to-tail to form a super-gene. Results showed that the multiple gene sequence analysis using DNA repair genes had better resolution at class level than the housekeeping genes. As housekeeping genes, the DNA repair genes were advantageous to separate bacterial groups at low taxonomic levels and also sensitive to genes derived from horizontal transfer.

Support Vector Machine for Prediction of Horizontal Gene Transfers in Bacteria Genomes / 生物化学与生物物理进展

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), also Lateral gene transfer (LGT), is any process in which an organism transfers genetic material to another species that is not its offspring. With the increase of available genomic data, it has become more convenient to study the way to detect the genes, which are products of horizontal transfers among a given genome. There are few data about known horizontal gene transfers in three bacterium genomes under consideration, so the experiments, which simulated gene transfer by artificially inserting phage genes, were carried out. Combining the feature analysis methods of gene sequences with support vector machine (SVM), a novel method was developed for identifying horizontal gene transfers (HGT) in 3 fully sequenced bacterium genomes (Escherichia coli K12, Borrelia burgdorferi, Bacillus cereus ZK). According to our previous work, codon use frequency (FCU) was selected as the sequence feature, in respect that it is inherently the fusion of both codon usage bias and amino acid composition signals. In addition, another computational method was proposed considering strand asymmetry and predicting horizontal gene transfers of leading strand and lagging strand of genomes under consideration, respectively. To avoid the occasionality of simulating gene transfer through artificially inserting phage genes, 100 times of the transfer-and-recover experiment were repeated and arithmetic average of measurement for each genome being considered were reported to evaluate algorithm's performance. Ten-fold cross-validation was used for both parameter and accuracy estimation. The best results were obtained for C-Support Vector Classification (C-SVC) type by using the radial basis function kernel with ?=100, while for one-class SVM type the best performance was obtained using the polynomial kernel of three degree. The performance of the approach was compared with that of Tsirigos' method ,which is one of the best predictive approachs to date in detecting of horizontal transfer genes. Firstly, for the original method that did not consider the strand asymmetry, the C-SVC type has a high relative improvement(RI) of 31.47% on hit ratio for Escherichia coli K12, while the one-class SVM type has RI of 11.61% for Borrelia burgdorferi. Moreover, as theoretically expected, the method considering the strand asymmetry resulted in higher RI than the original method. In order to examine the approach's performance in detecting factual gene transfer events, the approach was applied in genome of Enterococcus faecalis V583. It is not only succeed in recovering all the seven factual horizontally transferred genes, also found that the whole segment from 7 kb upstream of gene EF2293 to 38 kb downstream of gene EF2299 was probably transferred into E. faecalis V583 genome simultaneously with the above seven genes.