Search

Rhizoma coptidis (CR) is traditionally used for treating gastrointestinal diseases. Wine-processed CR (wCR), zingiber-processed CR (zCR), and evodia-processed CR (eCR) are its major processed products. However, the related study of their specific mechanisms is very limited, and they need to be further clarified. The aim of this study is to compare the intervening mechanism of wCR/zCR/eCR on rats via faecal metabolomics and 16S rDNA gene sequencing analysis. First, faecal samples were collected from the control and CR/wCR/zCR/eCR groups. Then, a metabolomics analysis was performed using UHPLC-Q/TOF-MS to obtain the metabolic profile and significantly altered metabolites. The 16S rDNA gene sequencing analysis was carried out to analyze the composition of gut microbiota and screen out the significantly altered microbiota at the genus level. Finally, a pathway enrichment analysis of the significantly altered metabolites via the KEGG database and a functional prediction of relevant gut microbes based on PICRUSt2 software were performed in combination. Together with the correlation analysis between metabolites and gut microbiota, the potential intervening mechanism of wCR/zCR/eCR was explored. The results suggested that wCR played a good role in maintaining immune homeostasis, promoting glycolysis, and reducing cholesterol; zCR had a better effect on protecting the integrity of the intestinal mucus barrier, preventing gastric ulcers, and reducing body cholesterol; eCR was good at protecting the integrity of the intestinal mucus barrier and promoting glycolysis. This study scientifically elucidated the intervening mechanism of wCR/zCR/eCR from the perspective of faecal metabolites and gut microbiota, providing a new insight into the processing mechanism research of Chinese herbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel technique is proposed in this paper for shared aperture multibeam forming in a complex time-modulated linear array. First, a uniform line array is interleaved randomly to form two sparse array subarrays. Subsequently, the theory of time modulation for linear arrays is applied in the constructed subarrays. In the meantime, the switch-on time sequences for each element of the two subarrays are optimized by an optimized differential evolution (DE) algorithm, i.e., the scaling factor of the sinusoidal iterative chaotic system and the adaptive crossover probability factor are used to enhance the diversity of the population. Lastly, the feasibility of the new technique is verified by the comparison between this technique and the basic multibeam algorithm in a shared aperture and the algorithm of iterative FFT. The results of simulations confirm that the proposed algorithm can form more desired beams, and it is superior to other similar approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]