Ultraviolet Irradiation Increased the Concentration of Vitamin D and Decreased the Concentration of Ergosterol in Shiitake Mushroom () and Oyster Mushroom () Powder in Ethanol Suspension.

Vitamin D deficiency is a serious global health problem. Edible mushrooms are a good source of vitamin D for human health. The objective of this experiment was to investigate the efficiency of converting its precursor ergosterol to vitamin D in shiitake mushroom () and oyster mushroom () powder in ethanol suspension under ultraviolet (UV) irradiation.

Dynamic Electrochemical Control of Cell Capture-and-Release Based on Redox-Controlled Host-Guest Interactions.

Artificial control of cell adhesion on smart surface is an on-demand technique in areas ranging from tissue engineering, stem cell differentiation, to the design of cell-based diagnostic system. In this paper, we report an electrochemical system for dynamic control of cell catch-and-release, which is based on the redox-controlled host-guest interaction. Experimental results reveal that the interaction between guest molecule (ferrocene, Fc) and host molecule (β-cyclodextrin, β-CD) is highly sensitive to electrochemical stimulus.

Electrochemical Detection and Distribution Analysis of β-Catenin for the Evaluation of Invasion and Metastasis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Pro-metastatic cell signaling controls the switch to distant metastasis and the final cancer death. In hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), this death switch is turned on by the multiprotein interactions of β-catenin with many transcription factors, so a method to assay the bioactivity of β-catenin to participate in these pro-metastatic protein/protein interactions has been proposed in this work. This method employs cost-effective peptide-based protein targeting ligands, while the electrochemical catalytic cross-linking in this method also "finalize" the noncovalent molecular recognition, so that the robustness can be improved to enable detection of relatively more complex biosamples.

Investigation of MTH1 activity via mismatch-based DNA chain elongation.

Accumulation and misincorporation of oxidative damaged 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine triphosphates (8-oxo-dGTP) in genomic DNA may cause serious cellular function disorders. MutT Homolog 1 (MTH1), a protein enzyme that can help to prevent 8-oxo-dGTP misincorporation, plays critical roles in oxidative stress neutralization, oncogene-associated tumor malignancy, and anticancer therapies. So, in this work, a simple and function-oriented method is developed for the assay of MTH1 activity.