Antioxidative phytochemicals from Rhododendron oldhamii Maxim. leaf extracts reduce serum uric acid levels in potassium oxonate-induced hyperuricemic mice.

Background: Some of the genus Rhododendron was used in traditional medicine for arthritis, acute and chronic bronchitis, asthma, pain, inflammation, rheumatism, hypertension and metabolic diseases and many species of the genus Rhododendron contain a large number of phenolic compounds and antioxidant properties that could be developed into pharmaceutical products.

Methods: In this study, the antioxidative phytochemicals of Rhododendron oldhamii Maxim. leaves were detected by an online HPLC-DPPH method.

Antioxidant activities and phytochemicals of leaf extracts from 10 native rhododendron species in taiwan.

Rhododendron, one of the most famous ornamental plants in the world, is traditionally a medicinal plant. However, the potential bioactivities of native Rhododendron in Taiwan have not been completely studied. In this study, the results revealed that Rhododendron pseudochrysanthum exhibited the best antioxidant activities among 10 native Rhododendron species in Taiwan.

Assessment of Candida glabrata strain relatedness by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and multilocus sequence typing.

In this study, 80 Candida glabrata isolates from intensive care unit and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients were typed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and mating type class determination. Among the 25 patients with multiple isolates, 19 patients (76%) contained multiple isolates exhibiting identical or highly related PFGE and MLST genotypes, which may indicate the maintenance or microvariation of one C. glabrata strain in each patient.

Multilocus sequence typing for analyses of clonality of Candida albicans strains in Taiwan.

Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) was used to characterize the genetic profiles of 51 Candida albicans isolates collected from 12 hospitals in Taiwan. Among the 51 isolates, 16 were epidemiologically unrelated, 28 were isolates from 11 critically ill, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative patients, and 7 were long-term serial isolates from 3 HIV-positive patients. Internal regions of seven housekeeping genes were sequenced.

Mutations on CaENO1 in Candida albicans inhibit cell growth in the presence of glucose.

Enolase (2-phospho-D-glycerate hydrolase) is an enzymatic component of the glycolytic pathway and is conserved through evolution. The TR-CaENO1/Caeno1 stain, of which the expression of CaENO1 is under control of the tetracycline-regulatable (TR) expression system, is utilized for elucidating the functions of CaENO1 in Candida albicans. As expected, there was no detectable CaENO1 mRNA when the TR-CaENO1/Caeno1 cells grew on media containing doxycycline repressing the expression of TR-CaENO1.