A comprehensive review of natural products with anti-hypoxic activity / 中国天然药物

Natural products exhibit substantial impacts in the field of anti-hypoxic traetment. Hypoxia can cause altitude sickness and other negative effect on the body. Headache, coma, exhaustion, vomiting and, in severe cases, death are some of the clinical signs. Currently, hypoxia is no longer just a concern in plateau regions; it is also one of the issues that can not be ignored by urban residents. This review covered polysaccharides, alkaloids, saponins, flavonoids, peptides and traditional Chinese compound prescriptions as natural products to protect against hypoxia. The active ingredients, effectiveness and mechanisms were discussed. The related anti-hypoxic mechanisms involve increasing the hemoglobin (HB) content, glycogen content and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) content, removing excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS), reducing lipid peroxidation, regulating the levels of related enzymes in cells, protecting the structural and functional integrity of the mitochondria and regulating the expression of apoptosis-related genes. These comprehensive summaries are beneficial to anti-hypoxic research and provide useful information for the development of anti-hypoxic products.

Promoter detection and transcriptional analysis of the spinosad biosynthetic gene cluster / 生物工程学报

Spinosad represents a new class of insecticides produced by Saccharopolyspora spinosa. To understand the transcription of the spinosad biosynthetic gene cluster, two promoter detection plasmids based on different reporter genes were constructed and used to detect 9 promoters in the spinosad biosynthetic gene cluster. In addition, the temporal transcriptional profiles of the corresponding genes controlled by the 9 promoters, together with 4 genes outside of the spinosad cluster but are required for the synthesis of sugars in spinosad, were examined by real-time PCR. The results indicate that the 9 spinosad biosynthetic genes were highly expressed at the stationary phase, which coincides with the accumulation of spinosad in the fermentation broth. Of particular note is that the transcription of the 4 sugar synthetic genes showed higher level at the exponential phase, suggesting the expression of sugar synthetic genes is not correlated with the spinosad synthetic genes. The data suggest that spinosad biosynthesis could be improved by engineering the expression pattern of the sugar synthetic genes that lie outside the spinosad gene cluster.

Recent advances in enzyme assays using fluoremetry / 生物工程学报

Enzymes play such a pivotal role in cellular metabolism that enzyme assays are important for bio-engineering, disease diagnoses and drug discovery. Among the reported methods, fluoremetry has attracted more and more attention due to its high sensitivity and possibility of continuous dynamic monitoring. The recent progresses and applications in enzyme assays using fluorescent probes were reviewed. Different methods were classified into direct fluorescence detection and indirect fluorescence detection according to their labeled substrates and detection mechanisms. Our writing purpose is to provide the readers with a flavor of the kinds of tools and strategies available in enzyme assays with fluorescent probes. Also, the research situation and prospects were disucssed