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BACKGROUND: The extraction and separation of natural polyphenols are attractive. Many researchers used high‐speed counter‐current chromatography to separate and purify polyphenols. However, it requires a long operating time, a large amount of organic solvent consumption, and high operating costs. In this work, the adsorption behaviors of polyphenols from orange peel extract on mixed‐mode resins were studied. The adsorption capacities and selectivities of different resins to the main polyphenols in the extract including gallic acid, p‐coumaric acid and ferulic acid were compared. The adsorption mechanism was analyzed by adsorption equilibrium and kinetics studies as well as molecular docking. The fixed‐bed adsorption was studied experimentally and theoretically. RESULTS: HD‐1 resin has excellent adsorption selectivities among the resins. The yield of polyphenols from orange peel by integrated extraction‐adsorption increased by 82.94% compared with that of extraction without adsorption. The adsorption isotherms agreed with the Freundlich model. Dubinin–Radushkevich model results indicated that the adsorption of gallic acid mainly depends on nonelectrostatic interaction. The adsorption of the other two polyphenols involves electrostatic and nonelectrostatic interaction. The adsorption kinetics curves accorded with the pseudo‐second‐order model, and the adsorption rate of gallic acid was the highest among the polyphenols. Adsorption of polyphenols involves both physical and chemical adsorption. The breakthrough curves could be closely simulated by Yoon–Nelson and Thoms models. Significant differences existed in times for 50% breakthrough. CONCLUSION: Mixed‐mode chromatography with HD‐1 resin as stationary phase is applicable to the separation of polyphenols. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yiqi Yangyin Decoction (YYD) is a classic traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formulation to treat lung cancer in clinic. Nevertheless, the active ingredients, key targets, and molecular mechanisms for YYD are still poorly understood. This study is focused on elucidating the pharmacological mechanism of YYD in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by using a combined network pharmacology approach and biological experiment validation. Online bioinformatics tools showed that 40 bioactive compounds and 229 putative targets of YYD were associated with anti-NSCLC activity. Protein-Protein Interaction (PPI) network demonstrated AKT1, SRC, JUN, TP53, and EGFR as the top five key targets for YYD against NSCLC. Through enrichment analysis, YYD was found to affect cell proliferation and apoptosis in NSCLC possibly by PI3K-AKT signaling. Molecular docking confirmed a strong binding between the main compounds (quercetin or luteolin) and EGFR. As demonstrated by CCK-8, EdU, and colony formation assays, we found a significant inhibition of YYD on cell proliferation. Moreover, YYD treatment induced cell cycle arrest by affecting p53, p21, and cyclin D1 expression. YYD administration enhanced apoptosis by changing the expression of cleaved caspase-3, Bax, and Bcl-2. Mechanistically, YYD resulted in a significant inactivation of EGFR-PI3K-AKT signaling. Furthermore, EGFR activator significantly reversed YYD-mediated proliferation inhibition and apoptosis. YYD also showed an inhibitory effect on tumor growth in mice. Together, YYD might target the EGFR-PI3K-AKT pathway to repress NSCLC progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous high‐elevation alpine plants of the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau (QTP) also have disjunct distribution in adjacent low‐altitude mountains. The out‐of‐QTP versus into‐the‐QTP hypothesis of alpine plants provide strong evidence for the highly disputed assumption of the massive ice sheet developed in the central plateau during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). In this study, we sequenced the genomes of most known populations of Megadenia, a monospecific alpine genus of Brassicaceae distributed primarily in the QTP, though rarely found in adjacent low‐elevation mountains of north China and Russia (NC‐R). All sequenced samples clustered into four geographic genetic groups: one pair was in the QTP and another was in NC‐R. The latter pair is nested within the former, and these findings support the out‐of‐QTP hypothesis. Dating the four genetic groups and niche distribution suggested that Megadenia migrated out of the QTP to adjacent regions during the LGM. The NC‐R group showed a decrease in the effective population sizes. In addition, the genes with high genetic divergences in the QTP group were mainly involved in habitat adaptations during low‐altitude colonization. These findings reject the hypothesis of development massive ice sheets, and support glacial survival of alpine plants within, as well as further migration out of, the QTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The developed JO‐IEX technology was applied to continuously separate four 5′‐ribonucleotides here. The unit contained seven columns with three separation steps, among which three columns were for the quaternary separation and the others for regeneration of resins. The operating conditions, that is, the critical flow rates in three separation steps were preliminarily designed according to the equilibrium theory and optimized by a three‐dimensional theoretical separation region approach. The feasibility of the JO‐IEX process and the separation performances were validated by four runs using the actual 5′‐ribonucleotides' enzymatic hydrolysate as feed solutions. The purities and yields of 5′‐ribonucleotides could reach above 97%. The productivity was enhanced to be 0.91 g/(kg h), and the desorbent consumption was reduced to be 1.01 L/g, compared to those of 0.70 g/(kg h) and 1.75 L/g in the fixed‐bed process. The technology proposed could be a potential technique in the continuous multicomponent ion‐exchange separation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) is primarily transmitted through droplets. All human tissues with the angiotensin‐converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and transmembrane protease serines 2 (TRMPRSS2) are potential targets of SARS‐CoV‐2. The role of saliva in SARS‐CoV‐2 transmission remains obscure. In this study, we attempted to reveal ACE2 and TRMPRSS2 protein expression in human parotid, submandibular, and sublingual glands (three major salivary glands). Then, the binding function of spike protein to ACE2 in three major salivary glands was detected. The expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in human saliva from parotid glands were both examined. Exogenous recombined ACE2 and TMPRSS2 anchoring and fusing to oral mucosal epithelial cells in vitro were also unraveled. ACE2 and TMPRSS2 were found mainly to be expressed in the cytomembrane and cytoplasm of epithelial cells in the serous acinus cells in parotid and submandibular glands. Our research also discovered that the spike protein of SARS‐CoV‐2 binds to ACE2 in salivary glands in vitro. Furthermore, exogenous ACE2 and TMPRSS2 can anchor and fuse to oral mucosa in vitro. Thus, the expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in human saliva might have implications for SARS‐CoV‐2 infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Drug resistance is a major clinical drawback behind the failure of chemotherapy in non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this study, we undertook to identify the precise role of circular RNA (circRNA) circ_0058357 in the functional properties of DDP‐resistant NSCLC cells. Methods: Circ_0058357, miR‐361‐3p and ATP‐binding cassette (ABC) subfamily C member 1 (ABCC1) were quantified by qRT‐PCR and western blot. Cell survival and viability were gauged by MTT assay. Cell proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and migration were measured by EdU, flow cytometry, transwell and wound‐healing assays, respectively. The direct relationship between miR‐361‐3p and circ_0058357 or ABCC1 was validated by dual‐luciferase reporter assay. Results: Our data showed that circ_0058357 was highly expressed in DDP‐resistant NSCLC tissues and cells. Inhibition of circ_0058357 repressed cell growth, invasion, migration, and promoted DDP sensitivity and cell apoptosis of H1299/DDP and A549/DDP cells in vitro. Moreover, inhibition of circ_0058357 diminished the growth of A549/DDP cells and sensitized them to the cytotoxic effect of DDP in vivo. Mechanistically, circ_0058357 contained a miR‐361‐3p binding site and miR‐361‐3p was identified as a molecular mediator of circ_0058357 regulation. MiR‐361‐3p suppressed ABCC1 expression by binding to ABCC1 3′UTR, and miR‐361‐3p‐mediated inhibition of ABCC1 affected the growth, invasion, migration, apoptosis and DDP sensitivity of H1299/DDP and A549/DDP cells. Furthermore, circ_0058357 regulated ABCC1 expression by competitively binding to shared miR‐361‐3p. Conclusions: Our findings identified that inhibition of circ_0058357 suppresses the growth and metastasis of H1299/DDP and A549/DDP cells and sensitizes them to DDP therapy partially by targeting the miR‐361‐3p/ABCC1 axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Great achievements have been made in network embedding based on single-layer networks. However, there are a variety of scenarios and systems that can be presented as multiplex networks, which can reveal more interesting patterns hidden in the data compared to single-layer networks. In the field of network embedding, in order to project the multiplex network into the latent space, it is necessary to consider richer structural information among network layers. However, current methods for multiplex network embedding mostly focus on the similarity of nodes in each layer of the network, while ignoring the similarity between different layers. In this paper, for multiplex network embedding, we propose a Layer Information Similarity Concerned Network Embedding (LISCNE) model considering the similarities between layers. Firstly, we introduce the common vector for each node shared by all layers and layer vectors for each layer where common vectors obtain the overall structure of the multiplex network and layer vectors learn semantics for each layer. We get the node embeddings in each layer by concatenating the common vectors and layer vectors with the consideration that the node embedding is related not only to the surrounding neighbors but also to the overall semantics. Furthermore, we define an index to formalize the similarity between different layers and the cross-network association. Constrained by layer similarity, the layer vectors with greater similarity are closer to each other and the aligned node embedding in these layers is also closer. To evaluate our proposed model, we conduct node classification and link prediction tasks to verify the effectiveness of our model, and the results show that LISCNE can achieve better or comparable performance compared to existing baseline methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To compare the micropore structure of marine-continental transitional shale with marine shale, organic geochemical, field emission scanning electron microscopy, and low-temperature nitrogen adsorption experiments were conducted on shale samples from the Shanxi Formation in the eastern Ordos Basin and the Longmaxi Formation in the southern Sichuan Basin. The results show that Shanxi Formation shale has a smaller specific surface area and pore volume than Longmaxi Formation shale; therefore, the transitional shales fail to provide sufficient pore spaces for the effective storage and preservation of natural gas. Both the transitional and marine shales are in an overmature stage with high total organic carbon content, but they differ considerably in pore types and development degrees. Inorganic pores and fractures are dominantly developed in transitional shales, such as intragranular pores and clay mineral interlayer fractures, while organic nanopores are rarely developed. In contrast, organic pores are the dominant pore type in the marine shales and inorganic pores are rarely observed. The fractal analysis also shows that pore structure complexity and heterogeneity are quite different. These differences were related to different organic types, i.e., type I of marine shale and type III of transitional shale. Marine Longmaxi shale has experienced liquid hydrocarbon cracking, gas generation, and pore-forming processes, providing good conditions for natural gas to be preserved. However, during the evolution of transitional Shanxi shale, gas cannot be effectively preserved due to the lack of the above evolution processes, leading to the poor gas-bearing property. The detailed comparison of the micropore structure between the transitional and marine shales is of great importance for the future exploitation of marine-continental transitional shale gas in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and solving the psychological health problems of college students have become a focus of social attention. Complex networks have become important tools to study the factors affecting psychological health, and the Gaussian graphical model is often used to estimate psychological networks. However, previous studies leave some gaps to overcome, including the following aspects. (1) When studying networks of subpopulations, the estimation neglects the intrinsic relationships among subpopulations, leading to a large difference between the estimated network and the real network. (2) Because of the high cost, previous psychological surveys often have a small sample size, and the psychological description is insufficient. Here, the intrinsic connections among multiple tasks are used, and multitask machine learning is applied to develop a multitask Gaussian graphical model. The psychological networks of the population and subpopulations are estimated based on psychological questionnaire data. This study is the first to apply a psychological network to such a large-scale college student psychological analysis, and we obtain some interesting results. The model presented here is a dynamic model based on complex networks which predicts individual behavior and provides insight into the intrinsic links among various symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identification of community structures and the underlying semantic characteristics of communities are essential tasks in complex network analysis. However, most methods proposed so far are typically only applicable to assortative community structures, that is, more links within communities and fewer links between different communities, which ignore the rich diversity of community regularities in real networks. In addition, the node attributes that provide rich semantics information of communities and networks can facilitate in-depth community detection of structural information. In this paper, we propose a novel unified Bayesian generative model to detect generalized communities and provide semantic descriptions simultaneously by combining network topology and node attributes. The proposed model is composed of two closely correlated parts by a transition matrix; we first apply the concept of a mixture model to describe network regularities and then adjust the classic Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to identify community semantically. Thus, the model can detect broad types of network structure regularities, including assortative structures, disassortative structures, and mixture structures and provide multiple semantic descriptions for the communities. To optimize the objective function of the model, we use an effective Gibbs sampling algorithm. Experiments on a number of synthetic and real networks show that our model has superior performance compared with some baselines on community detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND 5′-ribonucleotides including uridine 5′-monophosphate (UMP), adenosine 5′-monophosphate (AMP), cytidine 5′-monophosphate (CMP), and guanosine 5′-monophosphate (GMP) have been widely used as food additives. Ion exchange is a potential technique to separate 5′-ribonucleotides. A knowledge of uptake equilibrium on ion exchangers is important for the design and scale-up of ion exchange processes. The uptake equilibria of 5′-ribonucleotides and Na+ on the strong acid cation exchange resin NH-1 were studied experimentally and modelled in binary and multicomponent systems. The uptake mechanism and thermodynamics were also studied. RESULTS A modified Helfferich model was developed combining ion exchange of cations with adsorption of zwitter ions. The model can predict the uptake equilibria of 5′-ribonucleotides and Na+ successfully in multicomponent systems. The hydrophobicity of bases of 5′-ribonucleotides determined their relative affinities to the resin. The resin shows the strongest affinity for AMP among 5′-ribonucleotides. The uptakes of 5′-ribonucleotides cations is an endothermic and entropy-driven process. CONCLUSION The equilibrium model proposed is important for simulation and design of the dynamic separation process of 5′-ribonucleotides. UMP, GMP, and CMP can be separated based on their difference in isoelectric point. AMP and CMP with similar isoelectric point can be separated based on their difference in affinity to the resin. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Separation of butanol based on sorption methodology from acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation broth has advantages in terms of biocompatibility and stability, as well as economy, and therefore gains much attention. In this work a chromatographic column model based on the solid film linear driving force approach and the competitive Langmuir isotherm equations was used to predict the competitive sorption behaviors of ABE single, binary, and ternary mixture. It was observed that the outlet concentration of weaker retained components exceeded the inlet concentration, which is an evidence of competitive adsorption. Butanol, the strongest retained component, could replace ethanol almost completely and also most of acetone. In the end of this work, the proposed model was validated by comparison of the experimental and predicted ABE ternary breakthrough curves using the real ABE fermentation broth as a feed solution. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 31:124-134, 2015 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]