Healthy diet intervention reverses the progression of NASH through gut microbiota modulation.

IMPORTANCE: The link between gut microbiota and diet is crucial in the development of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). This study underscores the essential role of a healthy diet in preventing and treating NASH by reversing obesity, lipidemia, and gut microbiota dysbiosis. Moreover, the supplementation of functional food or drug to the diet can provide additional advantages by inhibiting hepatic inflammation through the modulation of the hepatic inflammasome signaling pathway and partially mediating the gut microbiota and lipopolysaccharide signaling pathway. This study highlights the importance of adopting healthy dietary habits in treating NASH and proposes that supplementing with ginger essential oil or obeticholic acid may offer additional benefits. Nonetheless, further clinical studies are necessary to validate these findings.

Sequence-dependent abnormal aggregation of human Tau fragment in an inducible cell model.

A pathological hallmark of Alzheimer disease (AD) is the accumulation of misfolded hyperphosphorylated microtubule-associated protein Tau within neurons, forming neurofibrillary tangles and leading to synaptic dysfunction and neuronal death. Here we study sequence-dependent abnormal aggregation of human fragment Tau244-372 in an inducible cell model. As evidenced by confocal laser scanning microscopy, Western blot, and immunogold electron microscopy, fibril-forming motifs are essential and sufficient for abnormal aggregation of Tau244-372 in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells induced by Congo red: when its two fibril-forming segments PHF6 and PHF6* are deleted, Tau244-372 does lose its ability to form fibrils in SH-SY5Y cells, and the replacement of PHF6 and PHF6* with an unrelated amyloidogenic sequence IFQINS from human lysozyme does rescue the fibril-forming ability of Tau244-372 in SH-SY5Y cells. By contrast, insertion of a non-fibril forming peptide GGGGGG does not drive the disabled Tau244-372 to misfold in SH-SY5Y cells. Furthermore, as revealed by quantum dots based probes combined with annexin V staining, annexin V-FITC apoptosis detection assay, and immunofluorescence, fibril-forming motifs are essential and sufficient for early apoptosis of living SH-SY5Y cells induced by abnormal aggregation of Tau244-372. Our results suggest that fibril-forming motifs could be the determinants of Tau protein tending to misfold in living cells, thereby inducing neuronal apoptosis and causing the initiation and development of AD.