The antioxidant capacity and protective effect of peptides from protein hydrolysate of Cordyceps militaris cultivated with tussah pupa (ECPs) on H2O2-injured HepG2 cells were studied. Results indicated ECP1 (<3 kDa) presented the strongest antioxidant activity compared with other molecular weight peptides. Pretreated with ECPs observably enhanced survival rates and reduced apoptosis rates of HepG2 cells. ECPs treatment decreased the ROS level, MDA content and increased CAT and GSH-Px activities of HepG2 cells. Besides, the morphologies of natural peptides from C. militaris cultivated with tussah pupa (NCP1) and ECP1 were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Characterization results suggested the structure of NCP1 was changed by enzymatic hydrolysis treatment. Most of hydrophobic and acidic amino acids contents (ACC) in ECP1 were also observably improved by enzymatic hydrolysis. In conclusion, low molecular weight peptides had potential value in the development of cosmetics and health food.

Alternative splicing (AS) is the direct cause of different transcripts in eukaryotes and plays a vital role in biological processes such as plant growth and signal transduction. Reproductive development is the key process for rice production. Although numerous studies on AS in plants have been identified, AS of reproductive development stage between japonica and indica rice has not been conducted. In this research, we identified 6994 genes (19.2

With more and more researchers conducting extensive research on all aspects of ribosomes, how to extract ribosomes with good effect and high activity has become a fundamental problem. In this article, Escherichia coli A19, MRE600, and JE28 cells often mentioned in the literature and ordinary E. coli BL21(DE3) cells were used to extract ribosomes by ultracentrifugation. The purpose was to study whether the ultracentrifugation method can be applied to extract effective ribosomes, and whether the ribosome extracts from different cells were different. The extracted ribosomes were validated by RNA electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, PURE system, and mass spectrometry. The validation experiment results showed that ribosomes from these four cells had different effects. The success of the experiment confirmed that effective ribosomes could be extracted from E. coli by ultracentrifugation, which laid a good foundation for researchers to carry out further applications on ribosomes.

The cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) system, as a technical core of synthetic biology, can simulate the transcription and translation process in an in vitro open environment without a complete living cell. It has been widely used in basic and applied research fields because of its advanced engineering features in flexibility and controllability. Compared to a typical crude extract-based CFPS system, due to defined and customizable components and lacking protein-degrading enzymes, the protein synthesis using recombinant elements (PURE) system draws great attention. This review first discusses the elemental composition of the PURE system. Then, the design and preparation of functional proteins for the PURE system, especially the critical ribosome, were examined. Furthermore, we trace the evolving development of the PURE system in versatile areas, including prototyping, synthesis of unnatural proteins, peptides and complex proteins, and biosensors. Finally, as a state-of-the-art engineering strategy, this review analyzes the opportunities and challenges faced by the PURE system in future scientific research and diverse applications.

Drought is one of the most important abiotic stresses that seriously affects plant growth and crop yield. Senecio vulgaris is a weed with strong drought tolerance, however, the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance hasn't been reported so far. In this study, RNA-Seq used to investigate the different expression genes in drought stress with different treatments (0 h, 6 h and 24 h by PEG-6000). A total of 7500 DEGs were involved, of which 981 showed differential expression between 0, 6 and 24 h treatments. Most DEGs related to osmotic adjustment substances, inducible proteins, transcription factors and plant hormone signal transduction showed differential expression in the early stage of drought stress. The changes in the expression activity of many vital proteins in the ABA signalling pathway indicate that they might also have an important contribution to the improvement of the drought tolerance of S. vulgaris. GO and KEGG analyses showed that more than half of DEGs were related to biological processes. The number of DEGs related to cellular components decreased with increasing drought stress. The pathways significantly enriched included plant hormone signal transduction, starch and sucrose metabolism, ribosome and protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum. Our study analyzed the molecular responses to drought stress in S. vulgaris, which provides new insight for better understanding of the molecular basis of drought stress responses, aiming to improve plant drought tolerance for yield and quality enhancement.

Two subspecies of rice, Oryza sativa ssp. indica and O. sativa ssp. japonica , with reproductive isolation and differences in morphology and phenotypic differences, were established during the process of rice domestication. To understand how domestication has changed the transcriptomes of the two rice subspecies and given rise to the phenotypic differences, we obtained approximately 700 Gb RNA-Seq data from 26 indica and 25 japonica accessions, and identified 97,005 transcribed fragments and 4579 novel transcriptionally active regions. The two rice subspecies had significantly different gene expression profiles, we identified 1,357 (3.3% in all genes) differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between indica and japonica rice. Combining existing gene function studies, it is found that some of these differential genes are related to the differentiation of the two subspecies, such as grain shape and cold tolerance, etc. Functional annotation of these DEGs indicates that they are involved in cell wall biosynthesis and reproductive processes. Furthermore, compared with the non-DEGs, the DEGs from both subspecies had more 5′flanking regions with low polymorphism to divergence ratios, indicating a stronger positive selection pressure on the regulation of the DEGs. This study improves our understanding of the rice genome by comparatively analyzing the transcriptomes of indica and japonica rice and identifies DEGs those may be responsible for the reproductive isolation and phenotypic differences between the two rice subspecies.