Modulation of gut microbiota by berberine and decocted Coptis chinensis Franch.in a high-fat diet-induced metabolic syndrome rat model

Objective:To investigate the effect of decocted Coptis chinensis Franch.(Huanglian Jianji,黄连煎剂,HLJJ) and berbenne on the gut microbiota of the rats with metabolic syndrome (MS) induced by high-fat diet (HFD).Methods:Sixty Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into normal diet (ND) group (n =15)and HFD group (n =45).After 8 weeks of feeding,the HFD group was further divided into three groups:a group provided with a combination of HLJJ and HFD for 4 weeks,a group provided with a combination of berberine and HFD for 4 weeks,and a group supplied only with HFD for 4 consecutive weeks.Epididymal fat weight,serum high-density lipoproteincholesterohC (HDL-C),lowdensity lipoproteincholesterol-C (LDL-C) and irisin levels were measured.In addition,the V3-V4 region of the cecum microbiota 16S rRNA gene amplicon was sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform.Results:MS was successfully induced in the rats with HFD for 8 weeks.After 12 weeks,serum irisin levels in the HFD + berberine group were significantly increased compared with those in the HFD group (P <.05).The high-quality tags were delineated into 1149 operational taxonomic units at a 97% similarity level.Furthermore,at the genus level,Akkermansia muciniphila (A.muciniphila),Bacteroides,and Ruminococcus were markedly increased,whereas Candidatus arthromitus,Prevotella,Phascolarctobacterium were in great decrease in the HLJJ group and the berberine group,compared with the HFD group.The abundance of A.muciniphila,Ruminococcus gnavus and Bacteroides was significantly higher in the berberine group,whereas,the abundance of Oscillospira was lower in the berberine group,compared with the HLJJ group.Conclusion:HLJJ and berberine changed the gut microbiota in rats with MS.The mechanism underlying the treatments of berberine and HLJJ on HFD-induced MS is partly different.

Identification of two novel B-cell epitopes on the nucleocapsid protein of porcine deltacoronavirus

Dear Editor,Porcine deltacoronavirus(PDCoV)is a novel discovered swine enteric coronavirus which can cause diarrhea and dehydration in pigs,particularly in neonatal piglets(Jung et al.,2016).At present,there are no commercial vaccines available for PDCo V.To control PDCoV transmission and perform antiviral therapy efficiently,a rapid and accurate diagnostic method to detect PDCo V is needed.

T_C-Gorenstein Projective,L_C-Gorenstein Injective and H_C-Gorenstein Flat Modules

The authors introduce and investigate the Tc-Gorenstein projective, Lc- Gorenstein injective and Hc-Gorenstein flat modules with respect to a semidualizing module C which shares the common properties with the Gorenstein projective, injective and flat modules, respectively. The authors prove that the classes of all the Tc-Gorenstein projective or the Hc-Gorenstein flat modules are exactly those Gorenstein projective or flat modules which are in the Auslander class with respect to C, respectively, and the classes of all the Lc-Gorenstein ＇injective modules are exactly those Gorenstein injective modules which are in the Bass class, so the authors get the relations between the Gorenstein projective, injective or flat modules and the C-Gorenstein projective, injective or flat modules. Moreover, the authors consider the Tc（R）-projective and Lc（R）-injective dimensions and Tc（R）-precovers and Lc（R）-preenvelopes. Fiually, the authors study the Hc-Gorenstein flat modules and extend the Foxby equivalences.