Senegenin promotes in vitro proliferation of human neural progenitor cells

Senegenin, an effective component of Polygala tenuifolia root extract, promotes proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitor cells in the hippocampus. However, the effects of senegenin on mesencephalon-derived neural progenitor cells remain poorly understood. Cells from a ventral mesencephalon neural progenitor cell line （ReNcell VM） were utilized as models for pharmaceutical screening. The effects of various senegenin concentrations on cell proliferation were analyzed, demonstrating that high senegenin concentrations （5, 10, 50, and 100 μmol/L）, particularly 50 μmol/L, significantly promoted proliferation of ReNcell VM cells. In the mitogen-activated protein kinase signal transduction pathway, senegenin significantly increased phosphorylation levels of extracellular signal-regulated kinases. Moreover, cell proliferation was suppressed by extracellular signal-regulated kinase inhibitors. Results suggested that senegenin contributed to in vitro proliferation of human neural progenitor cells by upregulating phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase.

Baicalin and jasminoidin effects on gene expression and compatibility in the hippocampus following focal cerebral ischemia

The compound traditional Chinese medicine Qingkailing, which is an ingredient used to treat cerebral ischemia, has been limited to studies concerning single genes or single pathways. Interactions and pharmacological mechanisms of the compound ingredients （baicalin and jasminoidin） remain poorly understood. In the present study, baicalin and jasminoidin, as well as the combination, were used to separately treat mouse models of cerebral ischemia, cDNA microarray analyses of 374 cerebral ischemia-related genes were utilized to determine changes in gene-expression profiles. Arraytrack 3.40 and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis （IPA） databases were utilized to analyze changes in gene molecular functions and network path functions. Baicalin or jasminoidin alone effectively reduced infarct area, and the combination resulted in significantly better outcomes. IPA showed inhibited cell apoptosis in the baicalin group and Ca^2＋ channel regulation in the jasminoidin group. The combination of baicalin and jasminoidin activated HTR3A and F5 expression, regulated Ca^2＋ channels, activated kappa light polypeptide gene enhancer inhibitor IKBKG in B cells to control IkB kinase/nuclear factor-kB cascade, suppressed activation of inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 receptors and activated transduction of guanine-nucleotide- binding protein （G protein） signal. Results suggested that the combination of baicalin and jasminoidin resulted in similar molecular mechanisms to baicalin and jasminoidin alone. However, novel pharmacological actions of compatibility were detected, demonstrating significant protection against cerebral ischemia.

Microscopic Determination of Leading Terms of the Interaction Hamiltonian Between sd- and g-Parts in the sdg IBM

Starting from one of the microscopic sdg interacting boson approximations, the lead-ing terms in the interaction Hamiltonian are discussed by using numerical investigations. Com-parisons of both the calculated levels and the overlap of wave functions between the exact re-sults and the approximations are made to find out negligible part in the Hamiltonian. The re-sults show that the leading terms given in this paper may provide a way to simplify the complexcalculations.

Renormalization of the g-Boson Effects for Os Isotopes

A modified renormalization approach based on that proposed by Druce et al.is presented.The over-all agreement between the spectra calculated here and the accurate spectra is significantly improved.We also useDurce’s approach to generate the renormalized spectra.It is shown that in our microscopic study,both of the ap-proaches are very useful to the determination of several free parameters of fermion residual interactions.