Upcycling Romaine lettuce outer leaves by infrared blanching and hot air drying.

Romaine lettuce outer leaves, as opposed to the more commonly marketed heart, are typically discarded and present an opportunity for upcycling as dried powders. Duquesne Romaine lettuce was evaluated to quantify and compare quality attributes of fresh outer and heart leaves, dried powders following hot air drying, and dried powders following an infrared (IR) blanching pretreatment before drying. Attributes measured for fresh leaves included moisture, water activity (A), color, total soluble phenolics (TSP), and antioxidant capacity (AC).

Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor-1α Increases Fibrinogen Gene Expression in Liver and Plasma Fibrinogen Concentration in Rats with Experimental Chronic Renal Failure.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with elevated plasma fibrinogen concentration. However, the underlying molecular mechanism for elevated plasma fibrinogen concentration in CKD patients has not yet been clarified. We recently found that HNF1α was significantly upregulated in the liver of chronic renal failure (CRF) rats, an experimental model of CKD in patients.

Aromatisation of steroids in the bivalve .

In this study, we demonstrated the presence of the enzymatic complex able to perform aromatization (estrogen synthesis) in both, the microsomal and mitochondrial fractions of gills and gonads from . Based on in vitro experiments, we highlighted the importance of temperature as the limiting factor of aromatisation efficiency (AE) in mussels. After testing range of temperatures (4-23 °C), the highest AE was found during incubation at 8 °C and pH 7.

Inhibition of LPS-stimulated ecto-adenosine deaminase attenuates endothelial cell activation.

Vascular inflammation is an important factor in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases, such as atherosclerosis. Changes in the extracellular nucleotide and in particular adenosine catabolism may alter a chronic inflammation and endothelial activation. This study aimed to evaluate the relation between vascular ecto-adenosine deaminase (eADA) activity and endothelial activation in humans and to analyze the effects of LPS-mediated inflammation on this activity as well as mechanisms of its increase.

Activities of purine converting enzymes in heart, liver and kidney mice LDLR-/- and Apo E-/.

Nucleotide metabolism plays a major role in a number of vital cellular processes such as energetics. This, in turn, is important in pathologies such as atherosclerosis. Three month old atherosclerotic mice with knock outs for LDLR and apolipoprotein E (ApoE) were used for the experiments.