Wang, P., Su, C., Li, R., Wang, H., Ren, Y., Sun, H., Yang, J., Sun, J., Shi, J., Tian, J., & Jiang, S. (2014). Mechanisms and effects of curcumin on spatial learning and memory improvement in APPswe/PS1dE9 mice. Journal of Neuroscience Research, 92, 218-231. The above article, published online on 23 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal's Editor-in-Chief, Dr Eric M. Prager, and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been agreed due to the unreliable nature of the figures presented. Concerns were originally raised via PubPeer (). After an investigation conducted by the journal's Editor-in-Chief, in accordance with the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), it was determined that the figures presented in the article could not be validated. Consequently, the main findings of the article, and the conclusions drawn, can no longer be relied upon. As recommended by COPE's guidelines, we have therefore decided to retract the article. We have attempted to contact the authors for comment but have been unsuccessful in our efforts. REFERENCEWang, P., Su, C., Li, R., Wang, H., Ren, Y., Sun, H., ... Jiang, S. (2014). Mechanisms and effects of curcumin on spatial learning and memory improvement in APPswe/PS1dE9 mice. Journal of Neuroscience Research, 92, 218-231. .

In previous studies, we have found that extracellular guanosine can stimulate endogenous progenitor/stem cell proliferation in the spinal cord following chronic injury and in the subventricular zone of the brains of rats afflicted with Parkinson's Disease. In this study, using neural stem cells isolated from one-day old rats, we found that guanosine could stimulate neural stem cell proliferation, and that the proliferation was not due to the guanosine metabolism mechanism since guanine, which is interconverted by an ecto-purine nucleoside phosphorylase from guanosine, has no stimulating effect on the proliferation of neural stem cells. We determined that second messenger cAMP was involved in the pathway as results showed that 100 microM guanosine stimulated cAMP accumulation. Using western blot analysis, we found that 100 microM guanosine can activate the phosphorylation of CREB without changing the total amount of CREB. In conclusion, guanosine can stimulate neural stem cell proliferation, and the cAMP-CREB pathway is involved in this biological effect.

The disturbance of the insulin-signaling pathway plays an important role in Alzheimer's disease. Resistance to insulin signaling renders neurons energy-deficient and vulnerable to oxidization or other metabolic insults and impairs synaptic plasticity. In search of neuroprotective drugs, we synthesized a peptide analogue, P165, an active domain of the soluble amyloid precursor protein, which is resistant to degradation and is suitable for oral administration in a clinical setting. Initially, we confirmed that P165 can protect cells from streptozotocin-caused damage and stimulate cell outgrowth using cultured SH-SY5Y cell lines treated with streptozotocin. P165 significantly reduced lactate dehydrogenase leakage from damaged cells, thereby rescuing cell energy production. Insulin signaling such as insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) and phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) proteins were upregulated to stimulate cell survival and growth. We proceeded to investigate the effect of P165 on streptozotocin-treated Alzheimer's disease (AD) rats. The data showed that P165 protected synaptic loss and dysfunction by increasing synaptophysin and PSD-95 (post synaptic density-95), while simultaneously decreasing α-synuclein expression. Moreover, animal behavior testing clearly showed that P165 increased rats' learning and memory activity. Overall, these results constitute evidence that peptide analogue 165 may protect synapse and improve learning and memory ability in AD.

Cancers contain a 'side population' (SP), a subset of cells that is greatly enriched in stem cells and which contains malignant progenitors. SP cells are characterised by high efflux capability for Hoechst 33342 dye and for anti-cancer therapeutic agents through transporters; ABCG2 (ATP-binding cassette transporter G2) is currently most closely associated with the SP phenotype. Guanosine is an important intercellular signalling molecule; it stimulates stem cell proliferation in vivo and affects cholesterol efflux in vitro through activation of ABCG transporter (ABCG1), raising the possibility that it might also affect ABCG2 and hence the SP. We examined the effects of guanosine on the SP of A549 lung cancer cells. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) revealed that exposure to 10 microM guanosine significantly decreased the proportion of SP cells after 48 hours but not after 6 hours. In contrast, Western blot analysis showed that 10 microM guanosine significantly decreased ABCG2 expression after 6 hours, but not after 48 hours. These data demonstrate that guanosine affects both the proportion of SP cells and ABCG2 transporters, but the lack of correlation between ABCG2 expression and the SP phenotype indicates that transporters other than ABCG2 are involved in maintaining the SP phenotype in A549 lung cancer cells.

Bacillus megaterium BM302 bred by ion-beam implantation produces L-sorbose dehydrogenase accelerative protein (SAP) to accelerate the activity of L-sorbose dehydrogenase (SDH) of Gluconobacter oxydans in the 2-keto-L-gulonic acid (2KLG) fermentation from L-sorbose by the mixed culture of B. megaterium BM302 and G. oxydans. The SAP purified by three chromatographic steps gave 35-fold purification with a yield of 13% and a specific activity of 5.21 units/mg protein. The molecular weight of the purified SAP was about 58 kDa. The SDH accelerative activity of SAP at pH 7 and 50°C was the highest. Additionally, it retained 60% activity at a pH range of 6.5 ∼ 10 and was stable at 20°C ∼ 60°C. After 0.32-unit SAP was added to the single cultured G. oxydans strains, the SDH activity was apparently accelerated and the 2KLG yield of GO29, GO112, G0 and GI13 was enhanced 2.1, 3.3, 3.5 and 2.9 folds respectively over that of the strains without the addition of SAP.

Aims: Antibiotics from Bacillus subtilis JA show strong pathogen inhibition ability, which has potential market application; yet, the composition of these antibiotics has not been elucidated. The aim of this paper is to isolate and identify these antibiotics.Methods and Results: The antagonistic activity of JA was tested in vitro; it exhibited strong inhibition against some important phytopathogens and postharvest pathogens. Crude antibiotic production was extracted with methanol from the precipitate by adding 6 mol l(-1) HCl to the bacillus-free culture broth. The crude extract was run on Diamonsil C-18 column (5 mu m, 250 x 4.6 mm) in HPLC system to separate the antibiotics. Major antibiotics were classified into three lipopeptide families according to electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry analysis. Subsequently, the classification of antibiotics was confirmed with typical collision-induced dissociation fragments.Conclusions: Three kinds of antibiotics were isolated from B. subtilis JA and were identified to the lipopeptide families, surfactin, iturin and fengycin. These compounds could function as biocontrol agents against a large spectrum of pathogens.Significance and Impact of the Study: This study provided a reliable and rapid method for isolation and structural characterization of lipopeptide antibiotics from B. subtilis.

The mutagenic effects of low energy ion beams on Schizosaccharomyces promb producing coenzyme Q_10 are studied.6 mutants are found for higher CoQ_10 production and their physiological characteristics have been studied, too. The result shows that all of them have an higher production than the ck. Especially, N1 has the highest CoQ_10 production of 6.9344 mg/L. It is 10 times higher than that of the ck. N2 is less higher with an value of 0.6905 mg/L.

The growth of licorice in arid areas faces nutritional and environmental stresses. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi have been shown to increase the abilities of plants to develop. However, little is known regarding the role of AM fungi in licorice ( Glycyrrhiza uralensis ) growth. In the present study, by inoculation with two AM fungi, Glomus mosseae (Nicolson & Gerdemann) Gerd. & Trappe and Glomus veriforme (P. Karst.), the effects on licorice growth in sand were examined by measuring plant height, number of leaves, shoot and root fresh weight, and by analyzing morphological parameters of the root system in sand. The influence of the two microorganisms on the accumulation of mineral nutritions and bioactive components in licorice were also investigated. The results showed that mycorrhyzae were of the Arum-type and their colonization frequency ( F %), colonization intensity ( M %) and colonization intensity ( m %) of AM fungi inoculation were found to be 80.0–84.6%, 49.4–60.0% and 58.4–71.9%, respectively. The inoculation significantly improved plant growth during early and late growth stages in comparison with the control. Moreover, inoculation of G. mosseae and G. versiforme , alone or in combination, improved plant phosphorus acquisition in the leaf over non-inoculation plants. In addition, mycorrhiza formation enhanced the glycyrrhizin concentration in roots, but resulted in a considerable reduction of the root oxidase activity. The results indicate that the inoculation with AM fungi could be a useful approach to increase the licorice pharmic quality.

Fermentate on the natural fibers waste inoculated respectively with Aspergillus niger P602 and Rhizopus oryzae RL6041 was studied in order to produce L-lactic acid.Results showed that,during the solid fermentation of 7.5 g natural cellulose inoculated with Aspergillus niger P602,the produced xylanase activity was 6 320 IU/g dry medium and cellulase 29 IU/g dry medium.While the reducing sugar concentration and saccharification rate after 100 mL water added were 14.07 g/L and 79.45 % respectively.The L-lactic acid content and the conversion rate of sugar to acid is 7 g/L and 47.6 % during liquid fermentation of the filter inoculated with Rhizopus oryzae RL6041.The optimal concentration of nitrogen was 3 g/L when(NH4)2SO4 was used as nitrogen resource.

In order to obtain an industrial strain with higher chitosanase yield, the wild strain Bacillus sp. S65 cells were mutated by a novel mutagen, nitrogen ion beam, with energy of 15 keV and dose ranging from 2.6 × 10 14 to 5.2 × 10 15 ions/cm 2 . One mutant, s65F5 with high yield of chitosanase was isolated. Results showed that the production of chitosanase of s65F5 was dramatically increased from 4.1 U/ml in s65 to 25 U/ml by ion beam implantation, while the fermentation time was shortened from 72 to 56 h, both of which greatly increased efficiency and reduced the cost of industrial production. Besides, the mutagenic effects of low-energy ion beam on survival rate showed characteristic down–up–down pattern, which was different from the traditional mutagens such as UV and γ-ray and the possible mutation mechanism was discussed.

For the production of oligosaccharides from chitosan, a chitosanase-producing bacterium, S65, was isolated from soil. On the basis of phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rDNA gene sequence and phenotypic analysis, S65 was identified as a Bacillus sp. strain. This bacterium constitutively produced chitosanase in a culture medium without chitosan as an inducer. S65 chitosanase was homogeneously purified by DEAE Sepharose fast flow anion exchange followed by Superdex 75 size exclusion, and the molecular weight was 45 kDa according to SDS-PAGE. Enzyme analysis showed that the optimum pH and temperature of S65 were 6.0 and 65 degrees C, respectively. Catalytic activity was stable from pH 5.5-6.5 at temperatures below 40 degrees C, and the pI of chitosanase was about 6.0 as determined by a test tube method. S65 chitosanase degraded carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) at the degree of about 5.3% relative to the value of soluble chitosan, but it cannot hydrolyze colloidal chitin and crystalline cellulose. Gene encoding was cloned and sequenced. The deduced amino acid sequence of the S65 exhibited the highest homology to those of family 8 glycanase, suggesting that the enzyme belonged to family 8.