A structure-based approach to discover a potential isomerase Pin1 inhibitor for cancer therapy using computational simulation and biological studies.

Peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase Pin1 occupies a prominent role in preventing the development of certain malignant tumors. Pin1 is considered a target for the treatment of related malignant tumors, so the identification of novel Pin1 inhibitors is particularly urgent. In this study, we preliminarily predicted eight candidates from FDA-approved drug database as the potential Pin1 inhibitors through virtual screening combined with empirical screening.

High incidence of coding gene mutations in mitochondrial DNA in esophageal cancer.

The aim of the present study was to detect mutations in the coding genes of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in three esophageal cancer cell lines and in tumor tissues obtained from 30 patients with esophageal cancer, to investigate the relationship between protein‑ and RNA‑coding gene mutations and esophageal cancer. mtDNA was extracted and the coding genes were sequenced and analyzed by comparing the sequencing results with the complete mitochondrial genome of Homo sapiens. The results revealed 39 mutations in the three esophageal cancer cell lines; the genes with the highest mutation frequencies included mitochondrially encoded cytochrome B (MT‑CYTB), NADH dehydrogenase 5 (MT‑ND5) and MT‑ND4 gene.

Chassis and key enzymes engineering for monoterpenes production.

Microbial production of monoterpenes is often limited by their cytotoxicity and in vivo conversion. Therefore, alleviating cytotoxicity and reducing conversion by chassis engineering are highly desirable. On the other hand, engineering key enzymes is also critical for improving monoterpenes production through facilitating the biosynthesis process.

Chromosome engineering of Escherichia coli for constitutive production of salvianic acid A.

Background: Salvianic acid A (SAA), a valuable natural product from herbal plant Salvia miltiorrhiza, exhibits excellent antioxidant activities on food industries and efficacious therapeutic potential on cardiovascular diseases. Recently, production of SAA in engineered Escherichia coli was established via the artificial biosynthetic pathway of SAA on the multiple plasmids in our previous work. However, the plasmid-mediated system required to supplement expensive inducers and antibiotics during the fermentation process, restricting scale-up production of SAA.

Manipulation of GES and ERG20 for geraniol overproduction in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Manipulation of monoterpene synthases to maximize flux towards targeted products from GPP (geranyl diphosphate) is the main challenge for heterologous monoterpene overproduction, in addition to cell toxicity from compounds themselves. In our study, by manipulation of the key enzymes geraniol synthase (GES) and farnesyl diphosphate synthase (Erg20), geraniol (a valuable acyclic monoterpene alcohol) overproduction was achieved in Saccharomyces cerevisiae with truncated 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme reductase (tHMGR) and isopentenyl diphosphate isomerase (IDI1) overexpressed. The expressions of all above engineered genes were under the control of Gal promoter for alleviating product toxicity.

"Perfect" designer chromosome V and behavior of a ring derivative.

Perfect matching of an assembled physical sequence to a specified designed sequence is crucial to verify design principles in genome synthesis. We designed and de novo synthesized 536,024-base pair chromosome synV in the "Build-A-Genome China" course. We corrected an initial isolate of synV to perfectly match the designed sequence using integrative cotransformation and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9)-mediated editing in 22 steps; synV strains exhibit high fitness under a variety of culture conditions, compared with that of wild-type V strains.

[Measurement of cooking loss and tenderness of fresh pork using visible/near infrared spectroscopy].

Cooking loss and tenderness are important quality characteristics of fresh pork. To find a rapid, non-destructive and non-contaminated method to measure them, visible/near infrared spectroscopy was proposed for measurement of cooking loss and tenderness of vacuum-packed pork loin. The acquired raw spectra were pretreated by Savisky-Golay smoothing, second derivative and MSC, respectively using the software of Unscrambler 9.

[Spectra of in situ reduction of Ag( I ) by phycocyanin and dynamic formation of Ag(0)].

The interaction of Ag( I ) and Phycocyanin(PC for short) was investigated by ultraviolet-visible, fluorescence and infrared spectra under the condition of 4 degrees C and without light. The results showed that the characteristic absorption of PC at 615 nm decreased gradually with the increase in Ag( I ) concentration and interaction time. Accordingly, its fluorescence emission peak and two fluorescence excitation peaks also decreased.