Publications by authors named "Lidija Brkljacic"

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is one of the most studied fungal diseases of wheat, causing massive grain yield and quality losses. This study aimed to extend previous studies on the physiological and biochemical responses of winter wheat to FHB stress in a controlled environment by focusing on the ascorbate-glutathione pathway (AsA-GSH), photosynthetic efficiency, and stress hormone levels, thus providing insight into the possible interactions of different defense mechanisms during infection. The activity of AsA-GSH metabolism was increased in FHB resistant varieties, maintaining the redox state of spikes, and consequently preserving functional photosystem II.

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The biochemical response and gene expression in different grapevine cultivars to water deficit are still not well understood. In this study, we investigated the performance of four traditional Croatian L. cultivars ('Plavac mali crni', 'Istrian Malvasia', 'Graševina', and 'Tribidrag'), and one wild ( subsp.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the gelling capacity of chiral oxalamide derivatives in vegetable oils, aiming to use these gels as fat substitutes and drug delivery systems in food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals.
  • - The oxalamide organogelators demonstrated excellent gelation efficiency, stability, and the ability to control release of active ingredients like acetylsalicylic acid and ibuprofen.
  • - Tests showed that low concentrations (as little as 0.025 wt%) of these gelators can effectively substitute palm fats in food products, offering promising characteristics for applications in products like cocoa and milk spreads.
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Article Synopsis
  • Brassicaceae plants, like traditional Croatian kale and wild cabbage, are rich in healthy phytochemicals that may benefit human health, particularly their antioxidant and anticancer properties.
  • The study employed techniques like spectrophotometry and LC-MS/MS to analyze phenolic compounds, finding sinapic acid to be the most abundant in both plant extracts, with wild cabbage having higher levels.
  • Both extracts demonstrated a significant ability to inhibit the growth of HeLa cancer cells without affecting normal skin cells, with wild cabbage showing effects at a lower concentration.
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Drought stress can significantly reduce wheat growth and development as well as grain yield. This study investigated morpho-physiological and hormonal (abscisic (ABA) and salicylic (SA) acids) responses of six winter wheat varieties during stem elongation and anthesis stage as well grain yield-related traits were measured after harvest. To examine drought response, plants were exposed to moderate non-lethal drought stress by withholding watering for 45 and 65% of the volumetric soil moisture content (VSMC) for 14 days at separate experiments for each of those two growth stages.

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Dipeptidyl peptidase III (DPP III) is a cytosolic, two-domain zinc-exopeptidase. It is widely distributed in mammalian tissues, where it's involved in the final steps of normal intracellular protein degradation. However, its pronounced affinity for some bioactive peptides (angiotensins, enkephalins, and endomorphins) suggests more specific functions such as blood pressure regulation and involvement in pain regulation.

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Salinity stress is one of the most damaging abiotic stresses to plants, causing disturbances in physiological, biochemical, and metabolic processes. The exogenous application of natural metabolites is a useful strategy to reduce the adverse effects of stress on crops. We investigated the effect of foliar application of salicylic acid (SA) and ferulic acid (FA) (10-100 μM) on short-term salt-stressed (150 mM NaCl, 72 h) Chinese cabbage plants.

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Due to its capability for high-throughput screening H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is commonly used for metabolite research. The key problem in H NMR spectroscopy of multicomponent mixtures is overlapping of component signals and that is increasing with the number of components, their complexity and structural similarity. It makes metabolic profiling, that is carried out through matching acquired spectra with metabolites from the library, a hard problem.

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Recently, functional connections between S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase (AHCY) activity and cancer have been reported. As the properties of AHCY include the hydrolysis of S-adenosylhomocysteine and maintenance of the cellular methylation potential, the connection between AHCY and cancer is not obvious. The mechanisms by which AHCY influences the cell cycle or cell proliferation have not yet been confirmed.

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Gels formed by self-assembly of small organic molecules are of wide interest as dynamic soft materials with numerous possible applications, especially in terms of nanotechnology for functional and responsive biomaterials, biosensors, and nanowires. Four bis-oxalamides were chosen to show if electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) could be used as a prediction of a good gelator and also to shed light on the gelation processes. By inspecting the gelation of several solvent, we showed that bis(amino acid)oxalamide 1 proved to be the most efficient, also being able of forming the largest observable assemblies in the gas phase.

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The free fatty acids (FFAs) are one of the major components of the lipids in the stratum corneum (SC), the uppermost layer of the skin. Relative composition of FFAs has been proposed as a biomarker of the skin barrier status in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). Here, we developed an LC-ESI-MS/MS method for simultaneous quantification of a range of FFAs with long and very long chain length in the SC collected by adhesive tape (D-Squame).

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Opiorphin, QRFSR-peptide, is a mature product of the PROL1 (proline rich, lacrimal 1) protein that showed beneficial effects in pain management, antidepressant-like actions as well as involvement in colonic motility and erectile physiology. Using opiorphin as a potential biomarker of different pathological states requires the development of robust and sensitive methods. We report a highly sensitive and specific liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometric detection (LC-MS/MS) analytical method for the analysis of opiorphin in human saliva.

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