[Research progress of correlation between multidrug resistance and transporters and traditional Chinese medicine intervention].

With the emergence of drug resistance in Western medicine, the repeated administration of clinical first-line drugs becomes more severe. There are many factors leading to multidrug resistance(MDR), so it is very difficult to solve the problem. Since traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) has been used in the field of MDR in recent years, the research on the transporter-associated drug resistance and intervention of TCM has gradually become a hot spot. Therefore, in order to further explore the relationships among drug resistance, transporters, and TCM intervention, we review the relevant research progress in recent years and comb the achievements and limitations of this research at present. In the end, we put forward the research direction of changing body's ADME through the host's transporters and gastrointestinal flora, which provides new ideas for future research.

[Characterization of AOX family members from Aquilaria sinensis and their responses to wounding].

Aquilaria sinensis is a typical inducible medicinal plant, that can produce agarwood only after it is wounded by external stimuli. Alternative oxidase(AOX) is one of the terminal oxidases of the plant mitochondrial electron transport, which plays an important role in plants' response to environmental stress. In order to reveal the physiological function of AOX gene in the process of agarwood formation from A.sinensis induced by wounding, AOX gene was cloned based on the transcriptome database and then identified by the bioinformatics analysis, and their expression pattern in different tissues and under wounding stress were detected by qRT-PCR. The results as follows. Three AOX genes were cloned from A.sinensis for the first time. They were named AsAOX1a, AsAOX1d and AsAOX2, respectively. The tissue expression shown that AsAOX1a is mainly expressed in the stem and the seed, and the AsAOX1d and AsAOX2 genes are mainly expressed in the pulp and the stem. AsAOX1a and AsAOX1d genes are highly responsive to wounding stress, and their response time was different. In addition, the expression of AsAOX1a and AsAOX2 induced by wounding are reduced by H_2O_2 treatment, but promoted by AsA treatment. The cloning, bioinformatics analysis and expression characteristics of AOX genes from A.sinensis provided basic information for further study the function of AOX genes in the development of A.sinensis, especially in the process of agarwood formation of A. sinensis induced by wounding.

[Comparative analysis of active components and transcriptome between autotetraploid and diploid of Dendrobium huoshanense].

In this study, the roots, stems and leaves of diploid and autotetraploid Dendrobium huoshanense were used as materials to compare their contents of polysaccharides and alkaloids, and the transcriptome sequencing analysis was carried out. The results showed that the contents of polysaccharides and alkaloids in the roots, stems and leaves of tetraploid were 7.6%, 34.5%, 17.2%, 0.01%, 0.024% and 0.035% higher than those of diploid D. huoshanense, respectively. The contents of active components in different tissues were significantly different. There were 3 687 differentially expressed genes in diploid and tetraploid D. huoshanense, of which 2 346 genes were up-regulated and 1 341 down regulated. Go functional analysis showed that these genes were mainly involved in growth and development, stress resistance and other related functions. KEGG pathway analysis showed that most of the differential genes were concentrated in the processes of carbon metabolism, signal transduction, carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism and energy metabolism. The differential expression of key genes involved in the metabolism of polysaccharides, terpenes and polyketones, amino acid metabolism, hormone synthesis and signal transduction in diploid and tetraploid plants may be the main reason for the high energy content, the increase of active components and the growth potential of tetraploid plants.

[Identification and differential expression of miRNA related to seed dormancy of Paris polyphylla var. chinensis].

The purpose of this study was to explore the expression pattern of miRNA in the process of embryo dormancy and provide a reference for the mechanism of regulating seed dormancy and germination by miRNA. We used high-throughput sequencing technology, bioinformatics analysis and real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR(qPCR) technology to sequence, screen and identify miRNAs of dormant and dormant embryos. The results showed that there were 23 811 977, 24 276 695, 20 611 876 and 20 601 811 unique sequences in the four sample libraries during the period of dormancy and dormancy release. MiRNAs are mainly distributed between 21 and 24 nt, among which the length of 24 nt occurred most frequently. A total of 31 known miRNAs were identified, belonging to 13 different families. 93 new miRNAs were predicted by bioinformatics software. Ten miRNAs(mir156 a-5 p, mir160 a-5 p, mir160 h-1, mir169 a-5 p, mir157 d, mir159 a-1, mir395-3, mir156 f-5 p, mir156-2 and mir171 a-3 p) were screened out. In this study, 10 miRNAs related to seed dormancy release were identified. The target genes mainly involved carbohydrate metabolism, plant hormone signal transduction, cell division and growth. The results of qRT-PCR showed that the sequencing results were consistent with the actual results.

A novel concept of Q-markers: Molecular connectivity index.

BACKGROUND: Drugs derived from botany have been playing essential role in both clinical treatment and pharmaceutical industry, unfortunately our worry is still that its quality and therapeutic efficacy are inconsistent. Recently many scientists launched a new project on quality (Q)-marker of medicinal herbs, this study was thus designed to generate a novel concept of quality (Q)-markers: molecular connectivity index (MCI), and to test and verify the new concept of molecular connectivity index (MCI). METHODS: The first-order term (1χ) was selected to calculate and study quality (Q)-marker for TCM. Houttuynia cordata Thunb. (HCT) was adopted as a model to verify the hypothesis. Volatile oils of HCT were determined using gas chromatography-mass (GC-MS). SIMCA 13.0 and SPSS 21.0 were used to deal with the data. RESULTS: The minimum of the MCI values was 1.273, belonging to the peak 15, but the maximum (12.822) belonged to the peak 34, and the average value of fifty volatile oils was 5.798. The results demonstrated that MCI was the principle component, and monoterpenoid and sesquiterpenoid were also the principle components in oils. Fig. 2a shows peak 5, 24, 34 were the significant ingredients, while Fig. 2b shows peak 2, 5, 24 were the significant components. CONCLUSION: The data demonstrated that MCI was associated with the structure of molecules and the therapeutic efficacy, MCI could directly exhibit the relationship between ingredients and effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). So MCI could be a potential and promising parameter for quality (Q)-marker. Therefore, MCI may be developed as a novel potential concept to control the quality of TCM.

Molecular Characterization and Variation of the Celiac Disease Epitope Domains among α-Gliadin Genes in Aegilops tauschii.

To explore the distribution and quantity of toxic epitopes in α-gliadins from Aegilops tauschii, a total of 133 complete α-gliadin coding sequences were obtained, including 69 pseudogenes with at least one premature stop codon and 64 genes with complete open reading frames (ORFs). Plenty of deletions and single amino acid substitutions were found in the 4 celiac disease (CD) toxic epitope domains through multiple alignments, in which the sequence of DQ2.5-glia-α2 demonstrated the most significant changes. Interestingly, 7 of the 59 α-gliadins were free of any kind of intact CD toxic epitopes, providing potential gene resources for low CD toxicity breeding of common wheat. Analysis of the neighbor-joining tree demonstrates that 2 of the totally 7 α-gliadins cluster within the homologues of Triticum (A genome), and the other 5 group with those of Aegilops Sitopsis (B genome). This result implies that the 7 α-gliadin genes may be originated from the ancestor species of Ae. tauschii, evolved by the homoploid hybrid of Triticum and Aegilops Sitopsis. The remaining 52 α-gliadins form a separate clade from other homologues of A and B genomes, suggesting a recent rapid gene expansion by gene duplication associated with the species adaptation.

Flour Quality and Related Molecular Characterization of High Molecular Weight Glutenin Subunit Genes from Wild Emmer Wheat Accession TD-256.

To clarify the effect of high molecular weight glutenin subunit (HMW-GS) from wild emmer wheat on flour quality, which has the same mobility as that from common wheat, the composition and molecular characterization of HMW-GS from wild emmer wheat accession TD-256, as well as its flour quality, were intensively analyzed. It is found that the mobilities of Glu-A1 and Glu-B1 subunits from TD-256 are consistent with those of bread wheat cv. 'XiaoYan 6'. Nevertheless, dough rheological properties of TD-256 reveal its poor flour quality. In the aspect of molecular structure from HMW-GS, only two conserved cysteine residues can be observed in the deduced protein sequence of 1Bx14* from TD-256, while most Glu-1Bx contain four conserved cysteine residues. In addition, as can be predicted from secondary structure, the quantity both of α-helixes and their amino acid residues of the subunits from TD-256 is fewer than those of common wheat. Though low molecular weight glutenin subunit (LMW-GS) and gliadin can also greatly influence flour quality, the protein structure of the HMW-GS revealed in this work can partly explain the poor flour quality of wild emmer accession TD-256.