Yacon Product(PBY)Modulates Intestinal Constipation and Protects the Integrity of Crypts in Wistar Rats

This study investigated the use of a product based on yacon (PBY) in microbiological, physical-chemical and intestinal characteristics of Wistar rats artificially constipated with Loperamide&reg;. Thirty-two rats were divided into four groups: Control (C), Constipated Control (CC), PBY (not constipated) and Constipated PBY (PBYC). The dosage of 0.14 g of FOS+ inulin/kg was tested. Microbiota, pH and faeces characteristics of faeces and caecal contents were evaluated. Caecal weight, morphometry of caecal villi and the concentration of short-chain fatty acids were determined. Higher caecal weight was identified in the PBYC animals as well as higher width, height and depth of cripts. The PBY group showed the highest (p < 0.05) concentration of butyrate (93.2 ± 65.5 mmol/L). The supplementation with PBY positively altered the intestine epithelial tissue in constipated animals, keeping the integrity of the caecum crypts.

Quantitative detection of single amino acid polymorphisms by targeted proteomics

Single-nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs)are recognized as one kind of major genetic variants in population scale.However,polymorphisms at the proteome level in population scale remain elusive.In the present study,we named amino acid variances derived from SNPs within coding regions as single amino acid polymorphisms(SAPs)at the proteome level,and developed a pipeline of nontargeted and targeted proteomics to identify and quantify SAP peptides in human plasma.The absolute concentrations of three selected SAP-peptide pairs among 290 Asian individuals were measured by selected reaction monitoring(SRM)approach,and their associations with both obesity and diabetes were further analyzed.This work revealed that heterozygotes and homozygotes with various SAPs in a population could have different associations with particular traits.In addition,the SRM approach allows us for the first time to separately measure the absolute concentration of each SAP peptide in the heterozygotes,which also shows different associations with particular traits.

SySAP: a system-level predictor of deleterious single amino acid polymorphisms

Single amino acid polymorphisms(SAPs),also known as non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms(nsSNPs),are responsible for most of human genetic diseases.Discriminate the deleterious SAPs from neutral ones can help identify the disease genes and understand the mechanism of diseases.In this work,a method of deleterious SAP prediction at system level was established.Unlike most existing methods,our method not only considers the sequence and structure information,but also the network information.The integration of network information can improve the performance of deleterious SAP prediction.To make our method available to the public,we developed SySAP(a System-level predictor of deleterious Single Amino acid Polymorphisms),an easy-to-use and high accurate web server.SySAP is freely available at http://www.biosino.org/SySAP/and http://lifecenter.sgst.cn/SySAP/.

Optimization of acid fracturing for a tight carbonate reservoir

In this study,acid fracturing treatments were simulated for a tight limestone reservoir within a shale formation using FRACPRO software.The purpose was to investigate the optimum acid fracturing design that leads to a higher fracture etched length and width,and higher fracture conductivity.Moreover,the impact of the rock-acid contact time and whether to consider a post-flush or fluids flowback,on the acid fracturing outcomes were also investigated.A simple geological model was constructed which consists of different lithological layers.Different acid fracturing design scenarios were considered starting from a single stage of acid injection to multi-stage treatment.In multi-stage acid treatment,alternate acid-slickwater injection was considered.Plain HCl acids with different concentrations and other acids that are already included in FRACPRO database were used.The results showed that the acid loss during post-flush is among the main problems of the acid fracturing in tight carbonate shale reservoir.For the single stage of acid injection,it is recommended to flow back the acid after well shut-in instead of considering a post-flush stage.The multi-stage alternate acid slickwater injection reduces or even eliminated the acid loss.However,it is recommended to inject a slickwater before well shut-in to reduce the rock-acid contact time,thus reducing the formation damage.The results also showed that the created fracture etched width decreases and the fracture etched length increases as the fracturing stages increase.In this study,because of the low carbonate layer permeability and compressive strength,a two-stage alternate 28%HCl and slickwater injection with a post-flush stage is recommended.