Timosaponin AIII attenuates precocious puberty in mice through downregulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis.

Precocious puberty (PP) has increasingly become a social concern. This study aimed to investigate the effect of timosaponin AIII (TAIII) on the precocious puberty and its possible mechanisms in mice. Four groups of mice consisting of controls that received saline or TAIII, a model that received leptin to induce precocious puberty (PP), and leptin+TAIII (the leptin model treated with TAIII) were used to determine the effect of TAIII on PP.

Clinical Application of Artificial Dermis and Autologous Skin in Repairing Skin and Soft Tissue Defects of Hands and Feet with Bone Exposure Injuries.

Patients with skin and soft tissue defects are very common. Mild trauma often causes mild skin damage, while severe injuries are often accompanied by bone and tendon exposure, which brings great pain to patients. For the defect of skin and soft tissue, the traditional treatment methods are mostly medium or full-thickness skin or skin flap transplantation.

Identification of a novel lactose oxidase in NUK-21.

Lactobionic acid (-β-galactosyl-(1-4)-gluconic acid) (LBA) is a high-value lactose derivative, produced via oxidation of the reducing terminal of lactose. LBA can be produced by fermentation using certain microorganisms, although subsequent purification is challenging. Therefore, we have attempted to identify an enzyme for possible use in LBA production.

Mining the characteristic interaction patterns on protein-protein binding interfaces.

Protein-protein interactions are observed in various biological processes. They are important for understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms and can be potential targets for developing small-molecule regulators of such processes. Previous studies suggest that certain residues on protein-protein binding interfaces are "hot spots".

Characterization of the stereochemical structures of 2H-thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine compounds and their binding affinities for anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins.

In a previous study we reported a class of compounds with a 2H-thiazolo[3,2-a]pyrimidine core structure as general inhibitors of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins. However, the absolute stereochemical configuration of one carbon atom on the core structure remained unsolved, and its potential impact on the binding affinities of compounds in this class was unknown. In this study, we obtained pure R and S enantiomers of four selected compounds by HPLC separation and chiral synthesis.

Use of macrocyclic antibiotics as the chiral selectors in capillary electrophoresis.

Macrocyclic antibiotics, especially vancomycin, represent a class of versatile chiral selectors for enantioseparations by capillary electrophoresis (CE). In this chapter, we describe the protocol for performing CE enantioseparations with vancomycin as the chiral selector. Dynamic coating of the capillary with polymers including the positively charged polyelectrolyte hexadimethrine bromide or electro-neutral poly(dimethylacrylamide) proved to be very useful in order to reduce the adsorption of vancomycin onto the capillary wall resulting in an improved separation efficiency.