Sustainable and efficient method utilizing N-acetyl-L-cysteine for complete and enhanced ochratoxin A clearance by antagonistic yeast.

With the increasing global climate change, ochratoxin A (OTA) pollution in food and environment has become a serious and potential risk element threatening food safety and human health. Biodegradation of mycotoxin is an eco-friendly and efficient control strategy. Still, research works are warranted to develop low-cost, efficient, and sustainable approaches to enhance the mycotoxin degradation efficiency of microorganisms. In this study, the activities of N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) against OTA toxicity were evidenced, and its positive effects on the OTA degradation efficiency of antagonistic yeast, Cryptococcus podzolicus Y3 were verified. Co-culturing C. podzolicus Y3 with 10 mM NAC improved 100% and 92.6% OTA degradation rate into ochratoxin α (OTα) at 1 d and 2 d. The excellent promotion role of NAC on OTA degradation was observed even at low temperatures and alkaline conditions. C. podzolicus Y3 treated with OTA or OTA+NAC promoted reduced glutathione (GSH) accumulation. GSS and GSR genes were highly expressed after OTA and OTA+NAC treatment, contributing to GSH accumulation. In the early stages of NAC treatment, yeast viability and cell membrane were reduced, but the antioxidant property of NAC prevented lipid peroxidation. Our finding provides a sustainable and efficient new strategy to improve mycotoxin degradation by antagonistic yeasts, which could be applied to mycotoxin clearance.

Developing and validating the self-transcendent emotion dictionary for text analysis.

Recent years have seen a growing amount of research effort directed toward what positive media psychologists refer to as self-transcendent emotions, such as awe, admiration, elevation, gratitude, inspiration, and hope. While these emotions are invaluable to promote greater human connectedness, prosociality, and human flourishing, researchers are constrained in terms of analyzing self-transcendent emotions as expressed in spoken and written languages. Drawing upon the word-counting approach of the text analysis paradigm, this project aimed at constructing a dictionary tool-Self-Transcendent Emotion Dictionary (STED)-which can be uploaded into mainstream, text analytic software (e.g., LIWC) to identify and analyze self-transcendent emotions in large corpora. This dictionary tool was then refined and validated via three studies, where individual words were first rated with regard to their fitness into the proposed construct (Step 1), and then used to analyze essays written to reflect the corresponding construct (Step 2). Finally, the refined dictionary was applied to examine words used in nearly 4,000 human-coded New York Times articles (Step 3). Results indicated that the final dictionary, consisting of 351 lexicons and phrases, exhibits acceptable face and construct validity, and possesses a reasonable level of external validity and applicability. Despite its shortcoming in accounting for the rhetorical techniques ingrained in natural human language, the STED could be instrumental for social scientific inquiry of positive emotions in textual narratives.