A pilot study to screen the trisomy 13 from the amniotic fluid puncture.

Trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome) is a kind of congenital chromosomal abnormality disease. Trisomy 13 has high occurrence in fetuses or infants from the old aged pregnant women. Screening out the fetus with trisomy 13 early and avoiding the infant with trisomy 13 to be born is the main strategy in the care of delivery women with the fetus with trisomy 13.

A qPCR method to characterize the sex type of the cell strains from rats.

A simple and fast method was established to identify the sex types of the rat-derived cell strains. The single copy X-chromosome-linked gene AR and the single copy Y-chromosome-linked gene Sry were both detected with qPCR for the rat genomic DNA sample and the AR/Sry ratio was calculated. According to the law of the AR/Sry ratio, a new method to identify the sex types of the rat-derived cell strains was developed.

Retinoic acid can induce mouse embryonic stem cell R1/E to differentiate toward female germ cells while oleanolic acid can induce R1/E to differentiate toward both types of germ cells.

Retinoic acid (RA) and oleanolic acid (OA) were studied about their potential to induce mouse embryonic stem cell R1/E (MESC-R1/E) to differentiate toward germ cells. Embryoid bodies (EBs) first formed from MESC-R1/E and EBs were allowed to attach to the bottoms of normal cell-culturing plate and grow. Then, different compounds including RA, OA and so on were respectively added to induce MESC-R1/E to differentiate.

Study of oleanolic acid on the estrodiol production and the fat production of mouse preadipocyte 3T3-L1 in vitro.

The women during the menopause period have an increased tendency for the obesity, which represents the more fat production than during the premenopausal period. Although this is not beneficial overall, it could provide a compensatory source for the estrogen production for the menopausal women. So it would be meaningful to find an agent that could inhibit the fat production while does not disturb the total estrogen production by fat tissues.

Oleanolic acid has similar effects as retinoic acid in inducing mouse embryonic stem cell 1B10 to differentiate towards germ cells.

This study investigated the effects of the compound oleanolic acid (OA) in inducing mouse embryonic stem cells (MESC) to differentiate towards germ cells (GC). MESC 1B10 was used as the model cell. 1B10 was cultured, and embryoid bodies (EBs) were produced from 1B10.

A novel membrane-bound E3 ubiquitin ligase enhances the thermal resistance in plants.

High temperature stress disturbs cellular homoeostasis and results in a severe retardation in crop growth and development. Thus, it is important to reveal the mechanism of plants coping with heat stress. In this study, a novel gene that we identified from Brassica napus, referred to as BnTR1, was found to play a key role in heat stress response in planta.