Diversity of epiphytic fungi on the surface of Kyoho grape berries during ripening process in summer and winter at Nanning region, Guangxi, China.

The two-harvest-per-year farming system allow table grape to be harvested a year both in summer and winter in southern China. Herein, we used high-throughput sequencing to investigate the diversity of fungi on grape fruits surface during the ripening process in summer and winter at subtropical Nanning region, Guangxi, China. The results showed that 23 fungal species existed in all samples. Among them, the five most dominant species were Cladosporium ramotenellum, Pseudozyma aphidis, Gyrothrix spp., Gibberella intricans and Acremonium alternatum, with abundance from 61.62 % to 91.26 %. Analysis using the student's t-test for Shannon index indicated that components of fungal community varied significantly between the two ripening seasons. The dominant genera of core fungal community were Cladosporium, Gyrothrix, Paramycosphaerella, Acremonium, Penicillium and Tilletiopsis in the summer and Cladosporium, Pseudozyma, Gibberella, Colletotrichum, Sporobolomyces, Rhodosporidium, Alternaria and Aspergillus in the winter. Overall, fungi diversity on grape fruits surface at Nanning showed significantly differences between different ripening seasons. Our results ennrich the understanding of epiphytic communities of grape fruits in subtropics.

Proinsulin Promotes Self-Renewal of a Hematopoietic Progenitor Cell Line In Vitro.

The objective of this study was to assess the effects of exogenously expressed proinsulin on the biological characters of a hematopoietic stem cell line (HSC) and erythroid myeloid lymphoid (EML) cells and explore new strategies for cell therapy for type I diabetes. EML cells were transduced with lentivirus particles carrying the human proinsulin (proINS) gene. The positive transduced cells were selected based on green fluorescence protein (GFP) positivity and puromycin resistance. Overexpression of proINS was confirmed via real-time PCR and Western blotting. The functional activity of the human proINS secreted by EML cells was elucidated by analyzing the activation of insulin receptor and its downstream signaling. Pro-INS + EML cells were able to prime the phosphorylation of insulin receptor as well as induce the expression of downstream genes of insulin receptor. Furthermore, Wnt3a can significantly promote self-renewal of Pro-INS + EML cells. However, we did not observe significant changes in the proliferation and differentiation of INS + EML cells, compared to the control EML cells. Our results might be useful for developing a new therapy for diabetes mellitus.

A high throughput method for rapid screening of chitosanase-producing fungal strain under acidic conditions.

A novel high-throughput method was established for rapid screening of a large numbers of Aspergillus fumigatus (A. fumigatus) mutants with high chitosanase production under acidic culture condition by exploiting the fact that iodine can be used as the indicator to stain chitosan but is ineffective for chitooligosaccharides. The mutant population was generated by irradiating A. fumigatus CICC 2434 with Co(60)-γ rays. Mutants were cultured on acidic plates containing colloidal chitosan and preliminary screened according to diameter of haloes formed around colonies. Then, chitosanase production of the isolates were verified by dinitrosalicylic acid assay. Lastly, molecular masses on enzymolysis products of isolated mutants were rapidly compared by aniline blue plate assay. Using this method, the mutant strain Co-8 was selected, which had chitosanase activity of 24.87 U/mL (increased by 369.2 % as compared to that of its parental strain).Taking together, the method is easy, efficient and particularly suited to rapid screen acidophilic fungal strains with high chitosanase-production.