The aim of this study was to investigate the surface protection effects of acrylic-based varnishes including TiO2 and Al2O3 nano-fillers in the conservation process of naturally aged and worn surfaces of historical and cultural wooden structures. The varnishes were applied to the wood surfaces with a brush and the varnish-coated samples were artificially aged in a weathering cabin. The changes in the surfaces of the samples were evaluated according to color change, micro hardness, abrasion tests, scratch tests, surface durability, and surface characterization via scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The thermal properties and morphological characterization of the varnishes with nano-fillers were also determined, and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) and FTIR analyses were performed. The results showed that the micro hardness, abrasion, and scratch values of the varnishes were not statistically significant. However, the values of the varnishes with TiO2 were determined to be slightly higher than those of the varnishes with Al2O3. The surface durability of the neat varnish was significantly improved by adding the nano-fillers. With the addition of the nano-fillers, the SEM revealed reduced thickness of the varnishes on the surfaces of the wood samples. The thermal properties, optical properties with UV-vis, and morphological structure of the neat varnish were improved by adding the nano-fillers, whereas the FTIR detected no difference in the bonding of the varnishes. The UV spectra of TiO2 and Al2O3 generally showed a peak at 354nm and 210nm wavelengths, which means that they exhibited good absorbance in the UV region. The results indicated that adding nano-fillers to the neat varnish could generally improve the outdoor performance and lifetime of historical and cultural wooden structures.

BACKGROUND:Obesity is a complex genetic-based pediatric disorder which triggers life-threatening conditions. Therefore, the understanding the molecular mechanisms of obesity has been a significant approach in medicine. Computational methods allow rapid and comprehensive pathway analysis, which is important for generation of diagnosis and treatment of obesity. METHODS AND RESULTS:Aims of our study are to comprehensively investigate genetic characteristics of obesity in children with non-syndromic, early-onset (< 7 years), and severe obesity (BMI-SDS > 3) through computational approaches. First, the mutational analyses of 41 of obesity-related genes in 126 children with non-syndromic early-onset severe obesity and 76 healthy non-obese controls were performed using the next generation sequencing (NGS) technique, and the NGS data analyzed by using bioinformatics methods. Then, the relationship between pathogenic variants and anthropometric/biochemical parameters was further evaluated. Obtained results demonstrated that the 15 genes (ADIPOQ, ADRB2, ADRB3, IRS1, LEPR, NPY, POMC, PPARG, PPARGC1A, PPARGC1B, PTPN1, SLC22A1, SLC2A4, SREBF1 and UCP1) which directly related to obesity found linked together via biological pathways and/or functions. Among these genes, IRS1, PPARGC1A, and SLC2A4 stand out as the most central ones. Furthermore, 12 of non-synonymous pathogenic variants, including six novels, were detected on ADIPOQ (G90S and D242G), ADRB2 (V87M), PPARGC1A (E680G, A477T, and R656H), UCP1 (Q44R), and IRS1 (R302Q, R301H, R301C, H250P, and H250N) genes. CONCLUSION:We propose that 12 of non-synonymous pathogenic variations detected on ADIPOQ, ADRB2, PPARGC1A, UCP1, and IRS1 genes might have a cumulative effect on the development and progression of obesity.

There is an error in Table 2 in the published article, Journal of Food Bioactives, 2021;13:93–101, doi: 10.31665/JFB.2021.13263. The correct value in column “mg/100 g” under “D-glucose” is “59.50 ± 7.80”, not “9.50 ± 7.80”. The authors have included a corrected version of the table below.

ABSTRACTIn this study, chitosan/alginic acid/zinc oxide (CHI/AA/ZnO) nanostructured hydrogel sponges were fabricated by incorporating ZnO nanoparticles (<100 nm) into polymer matrix to develop a new potential biomaterial for hemorrhage control. For this purpose, the crosslinked CHI/AA/ZnO nanostructured sponges were synthesized by freeze‐drying technique. Genipin was used as a crosslinker. The prepared chitosan‐based sponges were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy—energy‐dispersive spectroscopy analysis. The effects of ZnO content on the physicochemical characteristics of sponge‐like nanostructured hydrogels were evaluated by swelling ratio in two different pH values. Physical immobilization of dexamethasone as a model drug in hydrogel matrix resulted sustained release of drug more than 3 days. Antibacterial activity of hydrogel sponges was assessed against Staphylococcus aureus. The cytotoxicity and hemostatic efficacy of crosslinked CHI/AA/ZnO sponge like‐nanostructured hydrogels was evaluated in vitro and in vivo, respectively. The results of this study demonstrated that the prepared CHI/AA/ZnO nanostructured sponge had the potential to be an antibacterial topical hemostat. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019, 136, 47522.

Type-2 diabetes (T2D) is the most common type of chronic disease in adults and accounts for around 90% of all cases of diabetes. Therefore, developing dietary supplements from natural sources, such as teas, is of great interest. Seven diet groups together with a parallel control group were used for three periods of 16 weeks in total [stabilization period (W-2-W0), model period (W0-W8), and treatment period (W8-W14)]. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the in vivo antidiabetic activities of green and black tea polysaccharides (GTPS and BTPS, respectively) using streptozotocin induced diabetic mice fed with either a high-fat diet (HFD) or normal diet (ND). Streptozotocin and HFD induced T2D in vivo model was developed during the model period (W0-W8) in C57BL/6J male mice. Both GTPS and BTPS groups were administrated for 6 weeks (daily 400 mg/kg body weight) by oral gavage throughout the treatment period (W8-W14). The results showed that BTPS group significantly (P < 0.05) decreased the fasting blood glucose level in diabetic mice even fed with a HFD and improved the insulin resistance. Similar effect was not obtained when GTPS group fed with a HFD. In addition, BTPS group fed with a HFD effectively suppressed the body weight gain despite high energy intake and was more successful than its GTPS counterpart group in healing pathologies of liver and affected plasma blood lipid levels due to streptozotocin and HFD-induced diabetes. The present work suggests that BTPS can be used as an antidiabetic dietary supplement without posing any potential health risk.

Procuring valuable bioactive compounds from low quality green tea is of great interest. Green tea polysaccharides (GTPS), obtained from low quality tea leaves, were examined for their yield, monosaccharide composition, total phenolic content, antioxidant potential, and structures as well as molecular weight distribution and in vitro anti-diabetic activities. GTPS were also evaluated for their toxicity by performing cytotoxicity and genotoxicity. Additionally, 50% lethal dose (LD50) for GTPS was determined using an acute toxicity test to assess the safe use of it as a dietary supplement. Monosaccharides of GTPS were mainly composed of xylose, glucose, ribose, galactose, arabinose, and glucuronic acid. GTPS exhibited 91.86% α-glucosidase inhibition at 0.5 mg/mL concentration. The α-glucosidase inhibitory activity of GTPS was higher than that of pharmacological glucosidase inhibitor, acarbose, which exhibited only 47.86% inhibition at 2.5 mg/mL concentration. Neither cytotoxic nor no mutagenic effects were found for GTPS. The acute toxicity also showed that LD50 of GTPS was greater than 5,000 mg/kg. The present work suggests that GTPS can be considered as an anti-diabetic dietary supplement without posing any potential health risk.

The improvements in high throughput sequencing technologies (HTS) made clinical sequencing projects such as ClinSeq and Genomics England feasible. Although there are significant improvements in accuracy and reproducibility of HTS based analyses, the usability of these types of data for diagnostic and prognostic applications necessitates a near perfect data generation. To assess the usability of a widely used HTS platform for accurate and reproducible clinical applications in terms of robustness, we generated whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequence data from the genomes of two human individuals in two different genome sequencing centers. After analyzing the data to characterize SNPs and indels using the same tools (BWA, SAMtools, and GATK), we observed significant number of discrepancies in the call sets. As expected, the most of the disagreements between the call sets were found within genomic regions containing common repeats and segmental duplications, albeit only a small fraction of the discordant variants were within the exons and other functionally relevant regions such as promoters. We conclude that although HTS platforms are sufficiently powerful for providing data for first-pass clinical tests, the variant predictions still need to be confirmed using orthogonal methods before using in clinical applications.

Dendritic cell (DC) vaccines are a promising and potent therapeutic tool for chronic diseases, autoimmune diseases, and cancer because of the unique ability of DCs to stimulate T cells. The challenge of DC vaccines is to find an effective form for antigen presentation. Although pure antigens, antigen complexes, plasmids, and mRNA have been used in different studies, no proper application to overcome this problem has been found yet. In this study, we investigated the eligibility of a commercial hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine or a vaccine-monoclonal antibody complex for antigen loading of DCs for a therapeutic purpose. DCs were derived from the bone marrow of transgenic hepatitis B (HBV-tg) mice using a granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor and interleukin-4, and then loaded with a commercial HBV vaccine (containing hepatitis B virus surface antigens and aluminum hydroxide adjuvant) or a vaccine-antibody complex. HBV-tg mice were immunized with the vaccine and vaccine-antibody loaded DCs. Optimum HBV vaccine concentration and loading time were determined by 2-(4-iodophenyl)-3-(4-nitrophenyl)-5-(2,4-disulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium (WST-1) methods. Therapeutic effects of vaccine-antibody loaded DCs were determined by the evaluation of antibody response and hepatitis B surface expression levels in HBV-tg mice. Our results showed that commercial HBV vaccine loaded DCs induced humoral response in HBV-tg mice but had no effect on cellular immunity.

Objective: In this study, we aimed to develop new alternative dendritic cell (DC) vaccine by using synergic effect of between vaccine or vaccine-antibody loaded plasmacytoid dendritic cell (pDC) and conventional DC/myeloid DC (cDC/ mDC) to treat chronic hepatitis B.Materials and Methods: pDCs and mDCs derived from bone marrow of chronic hepatitis B model (HBV-tg) mice in the presence of flt-3L in in vitro and loaded with vaccine or vaccine-antibody complex and then HBV-tg mice were immunized intraperitoneally two times at two weeks intervals. Anti-HBsAg response was detected by ELISA, decrease of HBV DNA was investigated by RT-qPCR.Results: At day 8, flow cytometry analyses have shown that the frequency of mDCs was about 65% and pDC was about 35%. Anti-HBsAg response was induced in HBV-tg mice but it was not significant statistically and we did not detected decrease of HBV DNA in plasma.Conclusion: Even though pDC and mDC were derived from bone marrows, vaccine or vaccine-antibody complex may protect synergic effect between DCs.

Vitrification is becoming a preferred method for pre-implantation embryo cryopreservation. The objective of this study was to determine the differentially expressed genes of in vivo- and in vitro-produced bovine embryos after vitrification. In vitro- (IVF) and in vivo-derived (IVV) bovine blastocysts were identified as follows: in vitro-produced fresh (IVF-F), in vitro-produced vitrified (IVF-V), in vivo-derived fresh (IVV-F), in vivo-derived vitrified (IVV-V). The microarray results showed that 53 genes were differentially regulated between IVF and IVV, and 121 genes were differentially regulated between fresh and vitrified blastocysts (P < 0.05). There were 6, 268, 962, and 17 differentially regulated genes between IVF-F × IVV-F, IVF-V × IVV-V, IVF-F × IVF-V, and IVV-F × IVV-V, respectively (P < 0.05). While gene expression was significantly different between fresh and vitrified IVF blastocysts (P < 0.05), it was similar between fresh and vitrified IVV blastocysts. Significantly up-regulated KEGG pathways included ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, spliceosome, and oocyte meiosis in the fresh IVF blastocyst samples, while sphingolipid and purine metabolisms were up-regulated in the vitrified IVF blastocyst. The results showed that in vitro bovine blastocyst production protocols used in this study caused no major gene expression differences compared to those of in vivo-produced blastocysts. After vitrification, however, in vitro-produced blastocysts showed major gene expression differences compared to in vivo blastocysts. This study suggests that in vitro-produced embryos are of comparable quality to their in vivo counterparts. Vitrification of in vitro blastocysts, on the other hand, causes significant up-regulation of genes that are involved in stress responses.

The horse has been a food source, but more importantly, it has been a means for transport. Its domestication was one of the crucial steps in the history of human civilization. Despite the archaeological and molecular studies carried out on the history of horse domestication, which would contribute to conservation of the breeds, the details of the domestication of horses still remain to be resolved. We employed 21 microsatellite loci and mitochondrial control region partial sequences to analyse genetic variability within and among four Anatolian native horse breeds, Ayvacık Pony, Malakan Horse, Hınıs Horse and Canik Horse, as well as samples from indigenous horses of unknown breed ancestry. The aims of the study were twofold: first, to produce data from the prehistorically and historically important land bridge, Anatolia, in order to assess its role in horse domestication and second, to analyse the data from a conservation perspective to help the ministry improve conservation and management strategies regarding native horse breeds. Even though the microsatellite data revealed a high allelic diversity, 98% of the genetic variation partitioned within groups. Genetic structure did not correlate with a breed or geographic origin. High diversity was also detected in mtDNA control region sequence analysis. Frequencies of two haplogroups (HC and HF) revealed a cline between Asia and Europe, suggesting Anatolia as a probable connection route between the two continents. This first detailed genetic study on Anatolian horse breeds revealed high diversity among horse mtDNA haplogroups in Anatolia and suggested Anatolia's role as a conduit between the two continents. The study also provides an important basis for conservation practices in Turkey.

Microarray technology is one of the most powerful tools for gene expression profiling in animal sciences. The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of vitrification on gene expression in in vitro- and in vivo-derived bovine embryos, and to identify differential mRNA expression patterns between embryos produced by in vivo v. in vitro conditions. Three pools of in vivo- and in vitro-derived blastocyst-stage embryos were used for microarray analysis. Total RNA was isolated using the PicoPure RNA Isolation Kit (Arcturus Bioscience, Mountain View, CA). Bovine ovarian tissue total RNA was used as the reference. Total RNA samples were amplified using an Ovation® Pico WTA System (NuGEN Technologies, San Carlos, CA). The bovine 16 846-member microarrays spotted with 70-mer oligonucleotides were purchased from the Bovine Genomics Laboratory, University of Missouri. Amplified cDNA samples were labeled with Alexa Fluor 647 and 546 dyes (Molecular Probes, Eugene, OR), respectively. Combined, labeled samples were dried and resuspended in hybridization buffer containing 50% formamide (vol/vol), 5× SSC, and 0.1% sodium dodecyl sulfate (wt/vol). After denaturation and cooling, cDNA was applied onto a microarray slide. Microarrays were hybridized overnight at 42°C. Following hybridization, the slides were washed with different stringency buffers and water. After drying by centrifugation, the arrays were scanned on a GenePix 4000B scanner (Axon Instruments, Union City, CA). GenePix Pro4.1 software was used for griding and analysis of spot intensities. Good-quality spots were analyzed using the GeneSpring 7.3 software (Agilent Technologies, Inc., CA, Santa Clara, CA). The data were normalized per spot and per array by Lowess normalization. When comparing two treatments, the Welch t-test with Benjamini and Hochberg multiple testing correction was performed to determine the differentially expressed genes between embryo groups. Microarray experiments were performed in 3 biological and 2 technical replicates for all embryo samples. Differentially expressed genes between all embryo groups were identified. The DAVID Functional Annotation Tool was used to analyze the genes that were differentially expressed. The DAVID Functional Annotation Tool determined the co-occurrence probability and provided gene-GO term enrichment analysis to highlight the most relevant GO terms associated with a given gene list. Differentially expressed Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways are as follows: Ribosome, oxidative phosphorylation, spliceosome, and oocyte meiosis were significantly upregulated in the fresh embryos, whereas sphingolipid and purine metabolism was the upregulated in the vitrified in vitro-derived embryos. Gene expression was very similar between fresh and vitrified in vivo-derived, as opposed to in vitro-derived, embryos. This study was funded by the TUBITAK (Project no. KAMAG107G027) and startup funds to Yuksel Agca at the University of Missouri.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of décor paper and resin type on physical properties, mechanic properties, and surface quality properties of particleboards coated with décor papers impregnated by using different resin. White oak, New wenge and common maple pattern decor papers impregnated with urea formaldehyde (UF), melamine formaldehyde (MF) and urea-melamine formaldehyde (UF+MF) were used as coating materials. Particleboard surface was laminated with these coating materials by hydraulic press. As a result, specimens coated with MF-impregnated papers showed better performance than those coated with UF and UF+MF-impregnated papers. Resin type and paper pattern affected the physical, mechanical (with exception of tension strength), and surface properties (especially cigarette burn and abrasion) of coated particleboards. Physical and mechanical properties of coated particleboard were significantly improved compared to non-laminated particleboards. It was found that paper pattern affected the surface properties, such as impact, scratch, and abrasion, resistance to staining and cigarette burn. However, it did not change the cracking and steaming properties of the coated samples. After the coating process, it was determined that cigarette burn, abrasion, impact, and scratch performances were among 1 to 3 grade, lp:10-35, Fp:210-340/100-150, and 2 to 5 grade, respectively.

Recently, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for body weight and obesity have been mapped in an intercross population between the high body weight-selected mouse line DU6i and the inbred line DBA/2. Most QTLs were highly significant, but had small effects only. Under the hypothesis that small-effect QTLs might result from changes in gene activity, our strategy to identify candidate genes for the observed effects was directed towards the identification of differentially expressed genes. Therefore, here we compare the transcription profile of about 11 000 genes in epididymal fat tissues of males of two high body weight-selected (DU6 and DU6i) and two unselected mouse lines (DUKs and DBA/2). For the hybridisation of GeneChips, we used pooled samples of 20 individual mice. By pair-wise comparisons between selected and unselected mouse lines, a set of 77 genes was identified representing genes whose level of expression differed between obese and lean mouse strains. According to the functional classification of genes, 69 differentially expressed genes were involved in regulatory and metabolic pathways, cell division, cell stability, or immune response, and thus might have an effect on body weight and fat accumulation. 14 out of these genes, occur in QTL regions for body weight or abdominal fat weight. Further analyses are necessary to discriminate between genes directly causing QTL effects and indirectly regulated differentially expressed genes.

An F-2 pedigree based on the mouse lines DU6i and DBA/2 with extremely different growth and obesity characteristics was generated to search for QTLs affecting serum concentrations of triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (CHOL), HDL cholesterol (HDL-C), and LDL cholesterol (LDL-C). Compared with many other studies, we searched for spontaneous genetic variants contributing to high lipid levels under a standard breeding diet. Significant QTLs for CHOL were identified on chromosomes 4 and 6, and a female-specific locus on chromosome 3. QTLs for HDL-C were detected on chromosome 11 for both sexes, and on chromosome 1 for females. These QTLs are located in syntenic human regions that have QTLs that have not been previously confirmed in animal studies. LDL-C QTLs have been mapped for both sexes to chromosome 8 and in males on chromosome 13. Epistatic interactions that significantly accounted for the phenotypic variance of HDL-C, CHOL, and LDL-C serum concentrations were also detected with one interaction between chromosomes 8 and 15, accounting for 22% of the observed variance in LDL-C levels. The identified loci coincide in part with regions controlling growth and obesity. Thus, multiple genes or pleiotropic effects may be assumed. The identified QTLs for cholesterol and its transport proteins as subcomponents of risk for coronary heart disease will further improve our understanding of the genetic net controlling plasma lipid concentrations.