Study of the Effects of Condensed Tannin Additives on the Health and Growth Performance of Early-Weaned Piglets.

Using 0.5% and 1.0% MGM-P, the objective of the present study was to determine a more appropriate additive level for early-weaned piglets as an alternative to the use of antibiotics.

The Hox-based positional memory in muscle stem cells.

The skeletal muscle is a contractile tissue distributed throughout the body with various anatomical sizes, shapes and functions. In pathological conditions, such as muscular dystrophy, age-related sarcopenia and cancer cachexia, skeletal muscles are not uniformly affected throughout the body. This region-specific vulnerability cannot be fully explained by known physiological classifications, including muscle fiber types.

Metabolic Effects of Short-Term High-Fat Intake Vary Depending on Dietary Amino Acid Composition.

Background: It is generally accepted that excessive fat intake has undesirable effects on the energy metabolism of our body. Dietary amino acid composition is also critical to the regulation of lipid metabolism.

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate whether high-fat diets (HFDs) with different amino acid deficiencies lead to different metabolic outcomes.

High-Throughput 3D Imaging Flow Cytometry of Suspended Adherent 3D Cell Cultures.

3D cell cultures are indispensable in recapitulating in vivo environments. Among the many 3D culture methods, culturing adherent cells on hydrogel beads to form spheroid-like structures is a powerful strategy for maintaining high cell viability and functions in the adherent states. However, high-throughput, scalable technologies for 3D imaging of individual cells cultured on the hydrogel scaffolds are lacking.

Questionnaire Survey for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients in Japan; A Web-Based Japan, Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Patients Survey.

Background/aims: The prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Japan has been increasing. We aimed to clarify the symptoms of patients with IBD in Japan using an internet-based questionnaire survey.

Methods: Overall, 805 patients with IBD were asked to complete an internet-based questionnaire addressing their history of disturbances in daily activities, prevalence of fecal urgency, incontinence, and treatment preferences.

gen. nov., sp. nov., a novel actinomycete of the family .

An actinomycete strain K14-0274 was isolated from the root of Blume subsp. (H. Hara) H.

Droplet Array-Based Platform for Parallel Optical Analysis of Dynamic Extracellular Vesicle Secretion from Single Cells.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are essential intercellular communication tools, but the regulatory mechanisms governing heterogeneous EV secretion are still unclear due to the lack of methods for precise analysis. Monitoring the dynamics of secretion from individually isolated cells is crucial because in bulk analysis, secretion activity can be perturbed by cell-cell interactions, and a cell population rarely performs secretion in a magnitude- or duration-synchronized manner. Although various microfluidic techniques have been adopted to evaluate the abundance of single-cell-derived EVs, none can track their secretion dynamics continually for extended periods.

Effects of Supplementation with a Quebracho Tannin Product as an Alternative to Antibiotics on Growth Performance, Diarrhea, and Overall Health in Early-Weaned Piglets.

This study assessed the feasibility of using a vegetable extract, MGM-P (quebracho tannin product), as an alternative to antibiotics for weaned piglets; it investigated MGM-P effects on growth performance, diarrhea, and overall health in early-weaned piglets. In total, 24 piglets were allocated to three treatment groups fed basal diets supplemented with 0, 0.2%, or 0.

Dietary lysine restriction induces lipid accumulation in skeletal muscle through an increase in serum threonine levels in rats.

We previously reported that dietary amino acid restriction induces the accumulation of triglycerides (TAG) in the liver of growing rats. However, differences in TAG accumulation in individual cell types or other tissues were not examined. In this study, we show that TAG also accumulates in the muscle and adipose tissues of rats fed a low amino acid (low-AA) diet.

Development of Antibody-Fragment-Producing Rice for Neutralization of Human Norovirus.

Human norovirus is the leading cause of acute nonbacterial gastroenteritis in people of all ages worldwide. Currently, no licensed norovirus vaccine, pharmaceutical drug, or therapy is available for the control of norovirus infection. Here, we used a rice transgenic system, MucoRice, to produce a variable domain of a llama heavy-chain antibody fragment (VHH) specific for human norovirus (MucoRice-VHH).

Pancreatic glycoprotein 2 is a first line of defense for mucosal protection in intestinal inflammation.

Increases in adhesive and invasive commensal bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, and subsequent disruption of the epithelial barrier is implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, the protective systems against such barrier disruption are not fully understood. Here, we show that secretion of luminal glycoprotein 2 (GP2) from pancreatic acinar cells is induced in a TNF-dependent manner in mice with chemically induced colitis.

Alteration of serum amino acid profiles by dietary adenine supplementation inhibits fatty liver development in rats.

Studies on animal models have demonstrated that feeding a low-arginine diet inhibits triacylglycerol (TAG) secretion from the liver, resulting in marked fatty liver development in rats. Here, we first showed that culturing hepatocytes in the medium mimicking the serum amino acid profile of low-arginine diet-fed rats induced TAG accumulation in the cells, indicating that the specific amino acid profile caused TAG accumulation in hepatocytes. Dietary adenine supplementation completely recovered hepatic TAG secretion and abolished hepatic TAG accumulation in rats.

A Heterodimeric Antibody Fragment for Passive Immunotherapy Against Norovirus Infection.

Human noroviruses cause an estimated 685 million infections and 200 000 deaths annually worldwide. Although vaccines against GII.4 and GI.

Importance of Serum Amino Acid Profile for Induction of Hepatic Steatosis under Protein Malnutrition.

We previously reported that a low-protein diet caused animals to develop fatty liver containing a high level of triglycerides (TG), similar to the human nutritional disorder "kwashiorkor". To investigate the underlying mechanisms, we cultured hepatocytes in amino acid-sufficient or deficient medium. Surprisingly, the intracellular TG level was increased by amino acid deficiency without addition of any lipids or hormones, accompanied by enhanced lipid synthesis, indicating that hepatocytes themselves monitored the extracellular amino acid concentrations to induce lipid accumulation in a cell-autonomous manner.