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The healthy benefits of seaweed have increased its market demand in recent times. Quality control is crucial for seaweed to ensure the customers' interest and the sustainable development of seaweed farming industry. This study developed a quality control method for seaweed Sargassum fusiforme, rapid and simple, using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and chemometrics for the prediction of antioxidant capacity of S. fusiforme from different growth stages, S. fusiforme was distinguished according to growth stage by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and particle swarm optimization-support vector machine (PSO-SVM). The antioxidant properties including 2,2'-azinobis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) scavenging capacity, 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging capacity, and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) were quantified using competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS)-PLS model. Based on the spectra data preprocessed by multiplicative scatter and standard normal variate methods, the PSO-SVM models can accurately identify the growth stage of all S. fusiforme samples. The CARS-PLS models exhibited good performance in predicting the antioxidant capacity of S. fusiforme, with coefficient of determination (R P 2 ) and root mean square error (RMSEP) values in the independent prediction sets reaching 0.9778 and 0.4018 % for ABTS, 0.9414 and 2.0795 % for DPPH, and 0.9763 and 2.4386 μmol L -1 for FRAP, respectively. The quality and market price of S. fusiforme should increase in the order of maturation < growth < seedling regarding the antioxidant property. The overall results indicated that the NIR spectroscopy accompanied by chemometrics can assist for the quality control of S. fusiforme in a more rapid and simple manner. This study also provided a customer-oriented concept of seaweed quality grading based on deep insight into the antioxidant capability of S. fusiforme at different growth stages, which is highly valuable for precise quality control and standardization of seaweed market., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Chlordane, a previously extensively utilized insecticidal pesticide, has since been prohibited, however, owing to its limited degradability, it continues to persist significantly in soil and water reservoirs, subsequently accumulating within plant and animal organisms, representing a substantial threat to human health. Despite extensive research conducted over the past few decades to investigate the toxic effects of chlordane, there remains a notable dearth of studies focusing on its impact on sleep activity. Therefore, in this study, the effects of short-term and long-term exposure to chlordane on the activity and sleep of Drosophila were investigated. When exposed to chlordane at a concentration of 1 μM, Drosophila lost body weight, decreased body size and resulted in lipid metabolism disorders. In addition, chlordane exposure altered the arousal and sleep behaviors of Drosophila. Short-term exposure to chlordane resulted in an increase in night-time sleep duration, while long-term exposure to chlordane resulted in an increase in activity and a decrease in sleep, as evidenced by a decrease in the duration of each sleep session and the appearance of sleep fragmentation. Under conditions of long-term chlordane exposure, reactive oxygen species levels were significantly up-regulated in Drosophila. Our results suggest that long-term chlordane exposure triggers oxidative stress damage in Drosophila, leading to sleep disruption. This study offers novel insights into the harmful impacts of environmental pollutants on human sleep patterns and proposes that mitigating the presence of chlordane in the environment could potentially contribute to the reduction of global sleep disorder prevalence., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Cadmium (Cd) is a widely distributed toxic heavy metal that enters the environment via anthropogenic mobilization and accumulates in plants and animals, causing metabolic abnormalities even mortality. Although the toxic effects and stress damage of cadmium have been investigated extensively over the past few decades, research on its ability to trigger ferroptosis, growth retardation, and behavioral abnormalities is insufficient. As a result, the effects of CdCl 2 exposure on growth and development, activity and sleep, and ferroptosis in this study were examined in fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). When exposed to 0.5 mM CdCl 2 , the entire growth period from larvae to adults was prolonged, and the rates of pupation and eclosion were decreased. Additionally, CdCl 2 exposure resulted in a decrease in body weight and individual size of fruit fly and high lethality rate. Moreover, CdCl 2 exposure altered fruit fly behavior, including decreased activity and increased sleep duration, particularly in females. Ferrostatin-1 (Fer-1) is a potent selective ferroptosis inhibitor that effectively slows lipid hydroperoxide accumulation to rescue body size reduction and restore activity and sleep in CdCl 2 -exposed female flies. CdCl 2 exposure could induce ferroptosis in fruit fly mechanistically, as evidenced by inhibition of Nrf2 signaling pathway, accumulation of lipid peroxidation, impairment of GPX4 antioxidant system, and upregulation of iron metabolism. Our findings suggest that Cd exposure triggers ferroptosis, which leads to growth retardation and behavioral disorders in fruit fly., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Dendrobium officinale, often used as a kind of tea for daily drinks, has drawn increasing attention for its beneficial effects. Quality evaluation of D. officinale is of great significance to ensure its health care value and safeguard consumers' interest. Given that traditional analytical methods for assessing D. officinale quality are generally time-consuming and laborious, this study developed a comprehensive strategy, with the advantages of being rapid and efficient, enabling the quality evaluation of D. officinale from different geographical origins using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and chemometrics. As the quality indicators, polysaccharides, polyphenols, total flavonoids, and total alkaloids were quantified. Three types of wavelength selection methods were used for model optimization and these were synergy interval (SI), genetic algorithm (GA), and competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS). From the qualitative perspective, the geographical origins of D. officinale were differentiated by NIR spectroscopy combined with partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and support vector classification (SVC). The PLS models constructed based on the wavelengths selected by CARS yielded the best performance for prediction of the contents of quality indicators in D. officinale. The root mean square error (RMSEP) and coefficient of determination (R p 2 ) in the independent test sets were 12.7768 g kg -1 and 0.9586, 1.1346 g kg -1 and 0.9670, 0.3938 g kg -1 and 0.8803, 0.0825 and 0.7031 and for polysaccharides, polyphenols, total flavonoids, and total alkaloids, respectively. As for the origin identification, the nonlinear SVC was superior to the linear PLS-DA, with the correct recognition rates in calibration and prediction sets up to 100% and 100%, respectively. The overall results demonstrated the potential of NIR spectroscopy and chemometrics in the rapid determination of quality parameters and geographical origin. This study could provide a valuable reference for quality evaluation of D. officinale in a more rapid and comprehensive manner., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Obesity has become a global epidemic. Sargassum fusiforme fucoidan (Fuc) is a group of water-soluble heteropolysaccharides that exhibits a wide range of medicinal functions. It consists of l-fucose and sulfate groups, with l-fucose as the main monosaccharide. This study investigated the therapeutic effects of Fuc on diet-induced obesity (DIO) in C57BL/6J female mice. Fuc significantly alleviated obesity in mice induced by high-fat high-fructose (HFHF) feeding, inhibiting body weight gain, reducing fat accumulation, and improving hepatic steatosis. In addition, Fuc significantly improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity by enhancing the phosphorylation level of AKT (at Ser473) in the adipose tissues. Mechanistically, although Fuc did not decrease the energy intake in DIO mice, it significantly increased the energy expenditure by up-regulating the expression of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) in the adipose tissues. Notably, Fuc also improved the obesity-driven dysbiosis of gut microbiota and decreased the relative abundance of the obesity-related intestinal bacteria. However, Fuc was unable to alleviate DIO-induced metabolic disorders in pseudo-sterile mice. Our findings suggested that Fuc might remodel gut microbiota and exert its weight loss and hypolipidemic effects by increasing the energy expenditure, thus providing a novel perspective for treating obesity and related complications., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

The incidence of metabolic diseases is increasing every year, and several studies have highlighted the activity of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in causing hyperlipidemia and diabetes, and these compounds are considered to be endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Chlordane is classified as an endocrine disruptor, but the mechanism of how it functions is still unclear. This study investigates the effects of chlordane exposure on Drosophila larvae. Drosophila was cultured in diet containing 0.01 μM, 0.1 μM, 1 μM, 5 μM, and 10 μM chlordane, and the toxicity of chlordane, the growth and development of Drosophila, the homeostasis of glucose and lipid metabolism and insulin signaling pathway, lipid peroxidation-related indicators and Nrf2 signaling pathway were evaluated. We here found that exposure to high concentrations of chlordane decreased the survival rate of Drosophila and that exposure to low concentrations of chlordane caused disruption of glucose and lipid metabolism, increased insulin secretion and impairment of insulin signaling. Notably, it also led to massive ROS production and lipid peroxidation despite of the activation of Nrf2 signaling pathway, an important pathway for maintaining redox homeostasis. Collectively, chlordane causes lipid peroxidation and disrupts redox homeostasis, which may be a potential mechanism leading to impaired insulin signaling and the metabolism of glucose and lipid, ultimately affects Drosophila development., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Severe infections associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria and biofilms have attracted increasing interest as these diseases are difficult to treat with current antibiotics. Typical cationic antimicrobial peptides dermaseptins are considered to be the most promising next-generation antibiotics because of their broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities and minor side effects. Two new dermaseptin peptides, DMS-PS1 and DMS-PS2, have been identified by "shotgun" molecular cloning of encoding cDNAs in the crude skin secretions of the waxy monkey tree frog, Phyllomedusa sauvagei. The mature peptide sequences predicted from the cloned cDNAs were separated from crude skin secretions and confirmed by mass spectrometry. Chemically synthetic replicates were assessed for various biological activities. Both dermaseptins were potently effective against a broad spectrum of microorganisms including antibiotic-resistant bacteria and displayed significant potency against gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial biofilms with low toxicity towards mammalian red blood cells. Remarkably, DMS-PS2 was effective against infections in murine skin caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus as a result of an induced wound. The actions of DMS-PS2 were with a membrane permeabilization mode. Overall, the data provided convincing evidence for the development of anti-infectious agents and/or biomaterials as a new therapeutic approach against bacterial infections. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Bacterial adhesion to biomaterials remains a major problem. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are well-known components of the innate immune system that can be applied to overcome biofilm-associated infections. Cationic dermaseptin peptides showed significant broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities and activities against bacterial biofilms of persistent infections in association with weak toxicity for mammalian red blood cells. The membrane permeabilizing ability of DMS-PS2 was confirmed, and importantly, it demonstrated potent efficiency of the treatment of MRSA infected murine skin model. Furthermore, beyond our expectation, DMS-PS2 showed a self-aggregating parameter, indicating a promising potential for the use of immobilized AMPs in clinical applications., which makes it also a promising suggestion for infection-proof biomaterial development., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

P-selectin, mediated adhesion between endothelium and neutrophils, is a promising target for the therapeutics of acute inflammatory-related diseases. It is reported that brown algal fucoidans can antagonize P-selectin function. However, the fractionation and physicochemical characterization of Sargassum fusiforme fucoidan, and the screening of fucoidan fractions with P-selectin antagonistic capability have not been investigated. In this study, we isolated and fractionated systematically the S. fusiforme fucoidan by ion-exchange chromatography and size exclusion chromatography to obtain eight fucoidan fractions. Their physicochemical characterization was determined by chemical methods, HPLC and FT-IR. The inhibitory capacity of the fucoidan fractions in P-selectin-mediated leukocyte adhesion was evaluated by static adhesion assay and parallel-plate flow chamber. Results showed that fucoidan fractions possessed distinct physicochemical properties, including total carbohydrate, uronic acid and sulfate contents, molecular weight, and monosaccharide compositions. Among all the fucoidan fractions, SFF-32 and SFF-42 showed better blocking ability against P-selectin-mediated cell adhesion., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Diabetes is a complicated endocrine and metabolic disorder, which has become an epidemic health issue worldwide. Fucoidan is extensively distributed in the brown algae and several marine invertebrates exhibiting diverse biological activities. In the present study, the physicochemical property of Sargassum fusiforme fucoidan (SFF) and its effects on streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice and gut microbiota were investigated. Diabetes mice not only showed abnormal blood glucose, but also accompanied by multiple symptoms, such as gradual emaciation, decreased body weight, increased food and water intake. Compared with diabetic mice after 6-week treatment, administration of SFF significantly decreased the fasting blood glucose, diet and water intake. Furthermore, SFF attenuated the pathological change in the heart and liver, improved the liver function, and suppressed oxidative stress in STZ-induced diabetic mice. Simultaneously, SFF significantly altered the gut microbiota in the faeces of diabetic mice, decreased the relative abundances of the diabetes-related intestinal bacteria, which is a potential mechanism for relieving the symptoms of diabetes. Therefore, SFF might be considered as one of the promising complementary and alternative medicines for the management of diabetes mellitus in future., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Secondary metabolites are a range of bioactive compounds yielded by bacteria, fungi and plants, etc. The published archaea genomic data provide the opportunity for efficient identification of secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) by genome mining. However, the study of secondary metabolites in archaea is still rare. By using the antiSMASH, we found two main putative secondary metabolite BGCs, bacteriocin and terpene in 203 Archaea genomes. Compared with the genomes of Euryarchaeota that usually lives in less complexity of environment, the genomes of Crenarchaeota usually contained more abundant bacteriocin. In these archaea genomes, we also found the positive correlation between the abundance of bacteriocin and the abundance of CRISPR spacer, suggesting the bacteriocin might be a crucial component of the innate immune system that defense the microbe living in the common environment. The structure analysis of the bacteriocin gene clusters gave a clue that the assisted genes located at the edge of clusters evolved faster than the core biosynthetic genes. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to systematically explore the distribution of secondary metabolites in archaea, and the investigation of the relationship between BGC and CRISPR spacer expands our understanding of the evolutionary dynamic of these functional molecules., (Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The effects of algal blooms on seaweeds have been rarely studied, although harmful algal blooms (HABs) are now normally regarded as worldwide incidents. In the present study, the effects of dense Karenia mikimotoi cells on the growth and photosynthesis of Hizikia fusiformis, a common and commercially cultivated macroalga in coastal waters of the East China Sea (ECS), were studied to understand the possible consequences when the mariculture encountered a dense harmful algal bloom. Furthermore, the counteraction of the latter on the growth and photosynthetic activities of K. mikimotoi was determined to evaluate the contribution of H. fusiformis commercial cultivation to environmental improvements. The results showed that the chlorophyll a (Chl a) contents, maximal photochemical efficiency (F v /F m ) and relative electron transfer rate (rETR) of gas vesicles (specialized leaves), adult and young receptacles of H. fusiformis were all significantly (P<0.05) inhibited compared with the mono-cultured ones. When compared with mono-cultured H. fusiformis (without K. mikimotoi), the Chl a contents in gas vesicles, adult and young receptacles decreased by 20.6%, 17.6% and 33.2% within 2 weeks. Correspondingly, the F v /F m decreased by 7.9%, 37.4% and 43.7%; the apparent photosynthetic efficiency (α) decreased by 9.4%, 47.1% and 48.3%; and rETR decreased by 19.5%, 52.6% and 68.2%, respectively. The Chl a concentration of the mono-cultured K. mikimotoi (without H. fusiformis) increased to 2247.97μgl -1 from 958.11μgl -1 within 14 d. Those of the co-cultivated ones (with H. fusiformis), however, increased to 1591.31μgl -1 on the 8th day and then decreased rapidly to 254.99 (±37.73) μgl -1 after the next 6 days. Furthermore, compared with the mono-cultured K. mikimotoi cells, the F v /F m , α and rETR max of co-cultivated ones decreased by 9.4%, 36.3% and 30.6%, respectively. The results indicated that the mature sporophytes of H. fusiformis were resistant to dense K. mikimotoi blooms and this resistance was organ-dependent as: gas vesicle>adult receptacles>young receptacles. On the other hand, commercial mariculture of H. fusiformis demonstrated the potential of preventing the occurrence of algal blooms., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Water-soluble polysaccharides were isolated from the brown alga Hizikia fusiformis and separated using hydrophobic chromatography on an ME-1 resin column. Three major polysaccharide fractions, FG, GM-1 and GM-2, were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography, Fourier-transform infrared and (13)C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. These three fractions showed free radical scavenging activity against hydroxyl radical and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical in vitro. Among these three fractions, GM-2 had the best free radical scavenging activity. Thus, only GM-2 was used in the acute oxidative stress experiments in the CCl₄-induced liver injury model. GM-2 also protected against oxidative injury induced by CCl₄in vivo., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)