Activity

The purpose of this review is to enhance our understanding of the interactions of prebiotics and probiotics, which sheds new light on the future use of oligosaccharides and bifidobacteria for nutritional intervention or clinical application.The current work focuses on a cheap and simple preparation of highly conducting chitosan/hydroxyl ethylcellulose/polyaniline loaded with graphene oxide doped by silver nanoparticles (CS/HEC/PAni/GO@Ag) bionanocomposite as a biodegradable and biocompatible hydrogel for energy storage technology. learn more Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) displays the compatibility of chitosan, hydroxyl ethyl cellulose, and polyaniline and a good distribution of GO@Ag-NPs in bionanocomposite hydrogels. X-ray diffraction (XRD) displayed the structure and existence of GO@Ag-NPs in the matrix. The swelling percentage and the antibacterial activities slightly increased with raising the content of GO@Ag-NPs. Also, the presence of both chitosan and cellulose improves the biodegradation of the fabricated bionanocomposites, which is increased by adding GO. Moreover, the incorporation of 5% GO@Ag-NPs in hydrogels enhances dc-conductivity by about 25 times from 3.37 × 10-3 to 8.53 × 10-2 S/cm. The fabricated hydrogels are inexpensive, eco-friendly, and have high capacitance and permittivity, and so they can store electrical energy.Proteases are industrially important catalysts. They belong to a complex family of enzymes that perform highly focused proteolysis functions. Given their potential use, there has been renewed interest in the discovery of proteases with novel properties and a constant thrust to optimize the enzyme production. In the present study, a novel extracellular neutral protease produced from Arthrospira platensis was detected and characterized. Its proteolytic activity was strongly activated by β-mercaptoethanol, 5,5-dithio-bis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) and highly inhibited by Hg2+ and Zn2+ metal ions which support the fact that the studied protease belongs to the cysteine protease family. Using statistical modelling methodology, the logistic model has been selected to predict A. platensis growth-kinetic values. The optimal culture conditions for neutral protease production were found using Box-Behnken Design. The maximum experimental protease activities (159.79 U/mL) was achieved after 13 days of culture in an optimized Zarrouk medium containing 0.625 g/L NaCl, 0.625 g/L K2HPO4 and set on 9.5 initial pH. The extracellular protease of A. platensis can easily be used in the food industry for its important activity at neutral pH and its low production cost since it is a valuation of the residual culture medium after biomass recovery.In this study, the effect of long-term use drugs of cholesterol-lowering atorvastatin and simvastatin on the activity and molecular structure of pepsin as important gastric enzyme was investigated by various experimental and computational methods. Based on the results obtained from fluorescence experiments, both drugs can bond to pepsin and quench the fluorescence intensity of protein through the static quenching mechanism. Also analysis of the thermodynamic parameters of binding the drugs to pepsin showed that the main forces in the complex formation for both are hydrophobic interactions and van der Waals forces. The effects of the drugs on the enzymatic activity of pepsin were then investigated and results showed that in the presence of both drugs the catalytic activity of the enzyme was significantly increased in lower (0.3-0.6 mM) concentrations however about the atorvastatin, increasing the concentration (0.9 mM) decreased the protease activity of pepsin. Also as a result of the FTIR studies, it was found that binding of the drugs to protein did not significant alteration in the structure of the protein. In order to obtain the atomic details of drug-protein interactions, the computational calculations were performed. The results in good agreement with those obtained from the experimental for interaction; confirm that the drugs both are bind to a cleft near the active site of the protein without any change in the structure of pepsin. Overall from the results obtained in this study, it can be concluded that both simvastatin and atorvastatin can strongly bond to a location close to the active site of pepsin and the binding change the enzymatic activity of protein.

Biased attention to negative information is a mechanism for risk and relapse in depression. Attentional bias modification (ABM) paradigms manipulate attention away from negative information to reduce this bias. ABM results have been mixed due to inconsistent methodologies and stimuli design. This randomized controlled trial used a novel approach to modifying attentional bias.

An eye tracker manipulated stimuli in response to participants’ fixations to preferentially reward attention to positive stimuli by obscuring or enhancing image quality of negative and positive stimuli, respectively. Participants with major depressive disorder completed three 35-min sessions of active (n=20) or sham (n=20) ABM training. Attentional bias, memory for emotional words, and mood were assessed pre- and post-training.

Training reduced negative attentional bias; relative to sham, active training participants focused significantly more on positive compared to negative stimuli in a free-viewing eye-tracker task (p=.038, η

=0.109) and, at trend, disengaged from sad information more quickly in a computerized task (p=.052, η

=0.096). Active training participants remembered more happy than sad words in an emotional word learning task, indicating a distal transfer of training to emotional memory (p=.036, η

=0.11). Training did not significantly affect mood in the one-week trial.

Future studies should build on this proof-of-principle study with larger sample sizes and more intensive treatment to explore which mechanisms of training may lead to improvements in mood.

Attention biases in depression are modifiable through reward-based, eye-tracking training. These data suggest generalizability of training to other cognitive faculties – recall for affective information.

Attention biases in depression are modifiable through reward-based, eye-tracking training. These data suggest generalizability of training to other cognitive faculties – recall for affective information.