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Journal of Ethnopharmacology Jun 2024African wormwood (Artemisia afra Jacq. ex Willd.) has been used traditionally in southern Africa to treat illnesses causing fever and was recently shown to possess...
ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE
African wormwood (Artemisia afra Jacq. ex Willd.) has been used traditionally in southern Africa to treat illnesses causing fever and was recently shown to possess anti-tuberculosis activity. As tuberculosis is an endemic cause of fever in southern Africa, this suggests that the anti-tubercular activity of A. afra may have contributed to its traditional medicinal use.
AIM OF THE STUDY
Tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is a deadly and debilitating disease globally affecting millions annually. Emerging drug-resistant Mtb strains endanger the efficacy of the current therapies employed to treat tuberculosis; therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel drugs to combat this disease. Given the reported activity of A. afra against Mtb, we sought to determine the mechanisms by which A. afra inhibits and kills this bacterium.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
We used transcriptomics to investigate the impact of Artemisia spp. extracts on Mtb physiology. We then used chromatographic fractionation and biochemometric analyses to identify a bioactive fractions of A. afra extracts and identify an active compound.
RESULTS
Transcriptomic analysis revealed that A. afra exerts different effects on Mtb compared to A. annua or artemisinin, suggesting that A. afra possesses other phytochemicals with unique modes of action. A biochemometric study of A. afra resulted in the isolation of an O-methylflavone (1), 5-hydroxy-7-methoxy-2-(4-methoxyphenyl)chromen-4-one, which displayed considerable activity against Mtb strain mc6230 in both log phase growth and metabolically downshifted hypoxic cultures.
CONCLUSIONS
The present study demonstrated that an O-methylflavone constituent of Artemisia afra explains part of the activity of this plant against Mtb. This result contributes to a mechanistic understanding of the reported anti-tubercular activity of A. afra and highlights the need for further study of this traditional medicinal plant and its active compounds.
PubMed: 38944359
DOI: 10.1016/j.jep.2024.118500 -
Plant Physiology and Biochemistry : PPB Jun 2024In the context of climate change, the impact of root-zone warming (RW) on crop nutrient absorption and utilization has emerged as a significant concern that cannot be...
In the context of climate change, the impact of root-zone warming (RW) on crop nutrient absorption and utilization has emerged as a significant concern that cannot be overlooked. Nitrogen (N) is an essential element for crop growth and development, particularly under stress. The comprehensive effect and relationship between RW and N level remains unclear. The objective of this experiment was to investigate the impact of RW on root-shoot growth and photosynthetic physiological characteristics of maize seedlings under varying N levels. The results demonstrated that optimal RW was beneficial to the growth of maize, while excessive root-zone temperature (RT) significantly impeded N uptake in maize. Under low N treatment, the proportion of N distribution in roots increased, and the root surface area increased by 41 %. Furthermore, under low N levels, the decline in root vitality and the increase in root MDA caused by high RT were mitigated, resulting in an enhancement of the root's ability to cope with stress. For the above-ground part, under the double stress of high RT and low N, the shoot N concentration, leaf nitrate reductase, leaf glutamine synthase, chlorophyll content, net photosynthetic rate and shoot dry matter accumulation decreased by 86 %, 60 %, 35 %, 53 %, 64 % and 59 %, respectively. It can be reasonably concluded that reasonable N management is an important method to effectively reduce the impact of high RT stress.
PubMed: 38943877
DOI: 10.1016/j.plaphy.2024.108887 -
The Science of the Total Environment Jun 2024Hammam Faraun (HF) geothermal site in Egypt shows potential for addressing energy demand and fossil fuel shortages. This study utilizes abandoned oil well logs, seismic...
Hammam Faraun (HF) geothermal site in Egypt shows potential for addressing energy demand and fossil fuel shortages. This study utilizes abandoned oil well logs, seismic data, and surface geology to assess HF geothermal energy resources. Seismic interpretation identified a significant clysmic fault parallel to Hammam Faraun fault (HFF), named CLB fault. The two faults together create a renewable geothermal cycle through circulation of mixed formation-sea waters. Petrophysics revealed two main geothermal reservoirs: the Nubian sandstone reservoir and the Eocene Thebes carbonate reservoir with water saturation values approaching 100 %. Corrected borehole temperatures indicated reservoir temperatures around 120 °C and 140 °C for the Thebes and Nubian reservoirs, respectively. Fracture analysis and stress state provided insights into subsurface fractures. A geomechanical model demonstrated the impact of different stresses and pore pressure on geothermal fluid flow. NE-SW oriented fractures showed a higher dilation tendency due to aquathermal expansion. The integrated conceptual geothermal model suggested a magma chamber beneath HF as the heat source, related to Oligo-Miocene volcanic activity. The breached relay ramp and fault-related open fracture system serve as pathways for geothermal fluids. Evaluation of the geothermal potential utilized volumetric calculations and Monte Carlo simulation. The estimated hot water volumes were 1.72 km, 4.242 km, and 5.332 km for the Nubian reservoir in the onshore part, Thebes reservoir in the offshore part, and Nubian reservoir in the offshore part, respectively. The results indicate a medium enthalpy resource suitable for electricity generation using a Kalina geothermal power plant. The predicted geothermal power output is promising, with an average power output of 9.64 MWe, 21.38 MWe, and 43.76 MWe for the Nubian reservoir in the onshore part, Thebes reservoir in the offshore part, and Nubian reservoir in the offshore part, respectively. These outputs can potentially supply electricity to approximately 12,000, 29,000 and 53,000 households, respectively.
PubMed: 38942302
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.174283 -
Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy =... Jun 2024Myocardial ischemia (MI) is a significant contributor to ischemic heart diseases like angina pectoris and myocardial infarction. Reactive oxygen species produced during...
Salvia miltiorrhiza stem-leaf of total phenolic acid conversion products alleviate myocardial ischemia by regulating metabolic profiles, intestinal microbiota and metabolites.
Myocardial ischemia (MI) is a significant contributor to ischemic heart diseases like angina pectoris and myocardial infarction. Reactive oxygen species produced during MI can trigger lipid peroxidation, damaging cell structure and function. Salvia miltiorrhiza (SM) has been widely used clinically in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. However, in the process of rooting, the aboveground parts of this plant are usually discarded by tons. To make better use of these plant resources, the phenolic acids extracted and purified from the aerial part of SM were studied and chemically transformed, and the potential protective effect and possible mechanism of salvianolic acids containing a higher content of salvianolic acid A on MI were obtained. The transformed products of SM stem-leaves total phenolic acids with 8.16 % salvianolic acid A showed a better protective effect on the isoproterenol (ISO)-induced acute MI injury rat model. It can improve ST segment changes and has good antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticoagulant effects. In addition, the dysbiosis of gut microbiota and the related metabolic levels of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), phenylalanine and glycerophospholipids were improved. This was achieved by reducing the abundance of Bacteroides, Faecalibaculum, and L-phenylalanine levels. In addition, the abundance of probiotics in Butyricoccus, Roseburia, and norank_f_Eubacterium_coprostanoligenes_group, as well as the contents of propionic acid and isobutyric acid, LPCs and PCs were increased. In conclusion, total phenolic acids of SM stem-leaves showed protective effects against ISO-induced rats, especially the strongest effect after conversion, which is a new option for the prevention and treatment of MI.
PubMed: 38941891
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopha.2024.117055 -
Methods in Molecular Biology (Clifton,... 2024The proteomic approach plays a key role to characterize a biological system at any given time. In recent years, advances in proteomics have led to an increasing...
The proteomic approach plays a key role to characterize a biological system at any given time. In recent years, advances in proteomics have led to an increasing application in all biological fields, including plant matrices and associated microbiome studies. However, extracting adequate protein samples remains the most critical step for any plant proteomics study. The protein extraction protocols proposed for the phyllosphere involve an initial leaf washing step; however, this is an approach only applicable if interest is restricted to epiphytes. A metaproteomic approach is required to obtain an overall picture and consequently an extraction that considers proteins derived from the plant, epiphytic and endophytic microorganisms. The most commonly used extractions for plant tissue involve the use of phenol or TCA-acetone. However, for efficient protein recovery is essential to remove interfering components abundant in plant tissues, such as polysaccharides, lipids, and phenolic compounds. A well-proven protocol on the basis of a combination of TCA-acetone and phenol extraction is presented here, obtaining some cleaned protein pellets, suitable for electrophoresis and subsequent proteomics studies. Important points for the success of this protocol are (i) a proper sampling and sample preparation, (ii) maintaining samples at a low temperature during extraction and using protease inhibitors, (iii) an initial step in TCA-acetone to remove part of the interfering substances, and (iv) careful recovery of the phenolic phase. Furthermore, the protocol is timesaving and can be completed in one working day.
Topics: Plant Proteins; Proteomics; Plant Leaves; Acetone; Phenol; Plants; Trichloroacetic Acid
PubMed: 38941013
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3910-8_5 -
Frontiers in Bioscience (Elite Edition) May 2024Flaxseed mucilage (FSM) is one of the healthy components of flaxseed. FSM is an example of a material that can be used in the food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical...
BACKGROUND
Flaxseed mucilage (FSM) is one of the healthy components of flaxseed. FSM is an example of a material that can be used in the food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries due to its rheological properties. FSM consists mainly of two polysaccharides, arabinoxylan, and rhamnogalacturonan I, and it also contains protein components and minerals. The prospect of using FSM in food is due to its gelling, water binding, emulsifying, and foaming properties. In addition, valuable natural sources of phenolic compounds such as lignans, phenolic acids, flavonoids, phenylpropanoids, and tannins are partially extracted from flaxseed in FSM. These antioxidant components have pharmacological properties, including anti-diabetic, anti-hypertensive, immunomodulatory, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. A combination of FSM and lactobacilli in dairy foods can improve their functional properties. This study aimed to develop dairy products by adding of FSM and using two lactic acid bacteria (LAB). FSM (0.2%) was used as an ingredient to improve both the texture and antioxidant properties of the product.
METHODS
Skim milk was fermented with 0.2% flaxseed mucilage using and the probiotic AG9. The finished fermented milk products were stored at 4 °C for 14 days. Quantitative chemical, textural, and antioxidant analyses were carried out.
RESULTS
Adding 0.2% FSM to the dairy product stimulated the synthesis of lactic acid. FSM increased the viscosity and water-holding capacity of or AG9 fermented milk products. Combining these starter strains with FSM promoted the formation of a hard, elastic, resilient casein matrix in the product. When only AG9 was used for the fermentation, the dairy product had a high syneresis and a low viscosity and firmness; such a product is inferior in textural characteristics to the variant with commercial . The addition of FSM improved the textural properties of this variant. The use of AG9 and FSM makes it possible to obtain a fermented milk product with the highest content of polyphenolic compounds, which have the highest antioxidant properties and stimulate lipase and α-glucosidase inhibitor synthesis. Combining of and AG9 in the starter (20% of the total mass of the starter) and adding of 0.2% FSM is the optimal combination for obtaining a dairy product with high textural and antioxidant properties.
CONCLUSIONS
The physicochemical properties (viscosity, syneresis, water holding capacity, texture) and antioxidant properties of fermented milk were improved. In the future, as part of the work to investigate the functional properties of dairy products with FSM, studies will be conducted using in models.
Topics: Flax; Lactobacillus delbrueckii; Plant Mucilage; Lactobacillus plantarum; Antioxidants; Cultured Milk Products; Animals; Milk; Fermentation
PubMed: 38939910
DOI: 10.31083/j.fbe1602011 -
Przeglad Gastroenterologiczny 2024is a common medicinal plant widely cultivated in tropical regions of the world. The outer seed coat of , obtained by cleaning the seeds, contains soluble and insoluble... (Review)
Review
The role and therapeutic effectiveness of seed husk (psyllium husk) in the prevention and non-pharmacological treatment of gastrointestinal diseases. Part 1. Clinical use of psyllium husk in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and colorectal cancer.
is a common medicinal plant widely cultivated in tropical regions of the world. The outer seed coat of , obtained by cleaning the seeds, contains soluble and insoluble fibre in a ratio of 7:3, making products containing husk an ideal source of health-beneficial fibre. The results of clinical trials demonstrate the therapeutic efficacy of psyllium husk for various gastrointestinal disorders. It has also been documented that psyllium ingestion exhibits antioxidant, immunomodulatory, antiproliferative, anticancer, and antiviral effects. Such pleiotropic effects of husk are related to the presence in its composition of arabinoxylan, which forms a gel in an aqueous environment, as well as bioactive compounds and their metabolites. This article presents the evidence available in the literature on the therapeutic potential and possible mechanisms of action of psyllium in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis, and prevention of colorectal cancer.
PubMed: 38939069
DOI: 10.5114/pg.2024.139209 -
Frontiers in Plant Science 2024Common object detection and image segmentation methods are unable to accurately estimate the shape of the occluded fruit. Monitoring the growth status of shaded crops in...
Common object detection and image segmentation methods are unable to accurately estimate the shape of the occluded fruit. Monitoring the growth status of shaded crops in a specific environment is challenging, and certain studies related to crop harvesting and pest detection are constrained by the natural shadow conditions. Amodal segmentation can focus on the occluded part of the fruit and complete the overall shape of the fruit. We proposed a Transformer-based amodal segmentation algorithm to infer the amodal shape of occluded tomatoes. Considering the high cost of amodal annotation, we only needed modal dataset to train the model. The dataset was taken from two greenhouses on the farm and contains rich occlusion information. We introduced boundary estimation in the hourglass structured network to provide information about the completion of the amodal shapes, and reconstructed the occluded objects using a GAN network (with discriminator) and GAN loss. The model in this study showed accuracy, with average pairwise accuracy of 96.07%, mean intersection-over-union (mIoU) of 94.13% and invisible mIoU of 57.79%. We also examined the quality of pseudo-amodal annotations generated by our proposed model using Mask R-CNN. Its average precision (AP) and average precision with intersection over union (IoU) 0.5 (AP50) reached 63.91%,86.91% respectively. This method accurately and rationally achieves the shape of occluded tomatoes, saving the cost of manual annotation, and is able to deal with the boundary information of occlusion while decoupling the relationship of occluded objects from each other. Future work considers how to complete the amodal segmentation task without overly relying on the occlusion order and the quality of the modal mask, thus promising applications to provide technical support for the advancement of ecological monitoring techniques and ecological cultivation.
PubMed: 38938637
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1376138 -
Journal of Plant Research Jun 2024Most studies of terrestrial bryophytes as natural substrates for photosynthetic microorganisms have been performed in the polar regions, where bryophytes are an...
Most studies of terrestrial bryophytes as natural substrates for photosynthetic microorganisms have been performed in the polar regions, where bryophytes are an important part of the ecosystem. As they remain green throughout the year, bryophytes may also be an ideal substrate for epiphytic organisms in temperate regions. The present study investigated the colonization potential and diversity of microalgae on selected plant species in riparian forest and spruce monoculture in a temperate region. It examines whether the presence of algae is related to substrate humidity, the micromorphology of gametophyte or the seasonal availability of substrate. The taxonomic diversity of algae was studied. Cyanobacteria and green algae were cultured on BG-11 agar medium, while diatoms were identified in permanent diatomaceous slides. The alpha- and beta-diversity indices were calculated, and the communities were compared using Bray-Curtis distances and multidimensional correspondence analyses. Our findings indicate that the largest number of alga species were diatoms; however, their presence was only observed in riparian forest and was associated with high humidity. Both aerophilic and freshwater taxa were noted, the latter carried by water from nearby aquatic ecosystem. Green algae were present in both phytocoenoses and humidity appears to have no substantial effect on the degree of colonization; their diversity was low and the group consisted of terrestrial taxa. In two bryophytes growing at the highest humidity, cyanobacteria were only identified in culture. The key factor influencing the degree of microalgae colonization was the humidity of the substrate, which was related to the distance from water.
PubMed: 38935314
DOI: 10.1007/s10265-024-01551-2 -
The Journal of Animal Ecology Jun 2024Unravelling the intricate mechanisms that govern community coexistence remains a daunting challenge, particularly amidst ongoing environmental change. Individual...
Unravelling the intricate mechanisms that govern community coexistence remains a daunting challenge, particularly amidst ongoing environmental change. Individual physiology and metabolism are often studied to understand the response of individual animals to environmental change. However, this perspective is currently largely lacking in community ecology. We argue that the integration of individual metabolism into community theory can offer new insights into coexistence. We present the first individual-based metabolic community model for a terrestrial mammal community to simulate energy dynamics and home range behaviour in different environments. Using this model, we investigate how ecologically similar species coexist and maintain their energy balance under food competition. Only if individuals of different species are able to balance their incoming and outgoing energy over the long-term will they be able to coexist. After thoroughly testing and validating the model against real-world patterns such as of home range dynamics and field metabolic rates, we applied it as a case study to scenarios of habitat fragmentation - a widely discussed topic in biodiversity research. First, comparing single-species simulations with community simulations, we find that the effect of habitat fragmentation on populations is strongly context-dependent. While populations of species living alone in the landscape were mostly positively affected by fragmentation, the diversity of a community of species was highest under medium fragmentation scenarios. Under medium fragmentation, energy balance and reproductive investment were also most similar among species. We therefore suggest that similarity in energy balance among species promotes coexistence. We argue that energetics should be part of community ecology theory, as the relative energetic status and reproductive investment can reveal why and under what environmental conditions coexistence is likely to occur. As a result, landscapes can potentially be protected and designed to maximize coexistence. The metabolic community model presented here can be a promising tool to investigate other scenarios of environmental change or other species communities to further disentangle global change effects and preserve biodiversity.
PubMed: 38932441
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.14134