Role of Reduced Nitric Oxide in Liver Cell Apoptosis Inhibition During Liver Damage.

Hepatic injury is a major event in liver surgery and may lead to liver cell apoptosis. Nitric oxide (NO) is an unstable, carbon-centered radical with a short half-time and a key role in molecular signaling. Increasing evidence demonstrates that NO plays an important role in the liver cell apoptosis caused by hepatic ischemia reperfusion (IR) injury and other liver damage. Our recent article summarized the association between elevated nitric oxide levels and hepatic cell apoptosis during liver injury. This article reviews the newest research progress for the relationship between decreased nitric oxide levels and hepatic cell apoptosis inhibition during liver injury. It is shown that decreased NO level can influence liver apoptosis by promoting or inhibiting the signaling pathway involving the caspase family, BCL-2, mitochondria, oxidative stress, death receptors, and mitogen activated protein kinases, etc. This review outlines the literature basis for clinical application of anti-apoptosis treatment to relieve organ injury following liver surgery. NO-related drugs appear to be helpful in clinical treatment of liver diseases.

Surfactant-free microwave-assisted hydrothermal synthesis of BaMoO4 hierarchical self-assemblies and enhanced photoluminescence properties.

BaMoO(4) with 3D hierarchical multilayer disk-like and nest-like architectures self-assembled from 2D nanosheets was successfully synthesized via a microwave-assisted hydrothermal route without any surfactant. The as-prepared products were characterized by X-ray powder diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), field emission transmission electron microscope (FE-TEM), and photoluminescence (PL) spectrometer. The results show that the reaction parameters, including pH value, reactant concentration, and molar ratio of [Ba(2+)]/[MoO(4)(2-)], played important roles on the morphologies of the final products. And the formation mechanism of 3D hierarchical architectures is a stepwise oriented aggregation-based self-assembly process. The superstructure characteristic of 3D nest-like BaMoO(4) architecture was observed in HRTEM image and the corresponding fast Fourier transform (FFT) for the first time, and the superlattice reflections with non-integer indices occurred around the subcell reflections at ±1/6(2a*+2c*). Room temperature photoluminescence spectra of 3D BaMoO(4) architectures reveal a strong and broad blue emission, and the 3D nest-like architectures own the enhanced intensity than multilayer disks.