Systems biology in a commercial quality study of the Japanese Angelica radix: toward an understanding of traditional medicinal plants.

The commercial quality of Japanese Angelica radices -- Angelica acutiloba Kitagawa (Yamato-toki) and A. acutiloba Kitagawa var. sugiyama Hikino (Hokkai-toki) -- used in Kampo traditional herbal medicines, was studied by use of omics technologies. Complementary and alternative medical providers have observed in their clinical experience that differences in radix commercial quality reflect the differences in pharmacological responses; however, there has been little scientific examination of this phenomenon. The approach of omics, including metabolomics, transcriptomics, genomics, and informatics revealed a distinction between the radix-quality grades based on their metabolites, gene expression in human subjects, and plant genome sequences. Systems biology, constructing a network of omics data used to analyze this complex system, is expected to be a powerful tool for enhancing the study of radix quality and furthering a comprehensive understanding of all medicinal plants.

Butyrate induces necrotic cell death in murine colonic epithelial cell MCE301.

Recent findings have suggested that organic acids produced by anaerobic intestinal bacteria might contribute to the pathogenesis of colonic ulcers. In this study, it was shown that butyrate caused potent cytotoxicity in the murine normal colonic epithelial cells MCE301 at physiological concentrations. Several markers of apoptosis, such as phosphatidyl serine externalization, cytochrome c release, DNA fragmentation, and chromatin condensation were negative after butyrate exposure. Inhibitor of caspases failed to protect against butyrate cytotoxicity. By transmission electron microscopy, marked swollen mitochondria and vacuolization within the cytoplasm was observed by treatment of butyrate. Collective, these data indicated that butyrate-induced cell death caused through a necrosis-like process. Butyrate induced cell death was reduced partially by treatment with prednisolone or 5-aminosalicylates in a concentration dependent manner. These results suggest that (1) butyrate induces necrotic cell death but not apoptotic cell death, and (2) the necrotic cell death induced by butyrate may be useful as a novel in vitro model of ulcerative colitis to screen useful drugs for the treatment of the disease.