Purification of Proteins from Ginkgo Biloba Seeds and Their Antioxidant Activities

Ginkgo biloba seeds were widely used for food and traditional medicine in china. In the present study, antioxidant proteins named GP were purified from Ginkgo biloba seeds. The proteins （GP） were purified by homogenization of Ginkgo biloba seeds powder in the saline solution, precipitation with 70% ammonium sulphate, and filtration on DEAE-Cellulose 52 anion exchange column. GP showed protein content of 96%, and they showed three bands with approximate molecular weight of 15 kDa, 17 kDa, 21 kDa respectively by SDS-PAGE electrophoresis analysis. Compositions of amino acids obtained by Amino Acid Analyzer showed GP were rich in Glu, Ser ,His ,Asp, Gly, Ala, Leu and Lys compared with the other fractions. The antioxidant activities of GP were investigated using DPPH （the 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl） free radical-scavenging and ferric-reducing antioxidant power assays. The GP showed antioxidant activities higher than α-Tocopherol and BHA. Therefore, the present study demonstrates proteins from Ginkgo biloba seeds （GP） can be excellent antioxidant.

Electroacupuncture preconditioning attenuates ischemic brain injury by activation of the adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase signaling pathway

Electroacupuncture has therapeutic effects on ischemic brain injury, but its mechanism is still poorly understood. In this study, mice were stimulated by electroacupuncture at the Baihui（GV20） acupoint for 30 minutes at 1 m A and 2/15 Hz for 5 consecutive days. A cerebral ischemia model was established by ligating the bilateral common carotid artery for 15 minutes. At 72 hours after injury, neuronal injury in the mouse hippocampus had lessened, and the number of terminal deoxynucleotide transferase-mediated d UTP nick-end labeling-positive cells reduced after electroacupuncture treatment. Moreover, expression of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase α（AMPKα） and phosphorylated AMPKα was up-regulated. Intraperitoneal injection of the AMPK antagonist, compound C, suppressed this phenomenon. Our findings suggest that electroacupuncture preconditioning alleviates ischemic brain injury via AMPK activation.

DeepCPI:A Deep Learning-based Framework for Large-scale in silico Drug Screening

Accurate identification of compound–protein interactions(CPIs)in silico may deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of drug action and thus remarkably facilitate drug discovery and development.Conventional similarity-or docking-based computational methods for predicting CPIs rarely exploit latent features from currently available large-scale unlabeled compound and protein data and often limit their usage to relatively small-scale datasets.In the present study,we propose Deep CPI,a novel general and scalable computational framework that combines effective feature embedding(a technique of representation learning)with powerful deep learning methods to accurately predict CPIs at a large scale.Deep CPI automatically learns the implicit yet expressive low-dimensional features of compounds and proteins from a massive amount of unlabeled data.Evaluations of the measured CPIs in large-scale databases,such as Ch EMBL and Binding DB,as well as of the known drug–target interactions from Drug Bank,demonstrated the superior predictive performance of Deep CPI.Furthermore,several interactions among smallmolecule compounds and three G protein-coupled receptor targets(glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor,glucagon receptor,and vasoactive intestinal peptide receptor)predicted using Deep CPI were experimentally validated.The present study suggests that Deep CPI is a useful and powerful tool for drug discovery and repositioning.The source code of Deep CPI can be downloaded from https://github.com/Fangping Wan/Deep CPI.

Effects of fermented protein feed on the growth performance of pond-raised crab

This study aimed to elucidate the effect of a pellet feed containing fermented proteins on pond-raised Chinese mitten crabs,Eriocheir sinensis in a 7-month crab feeding experiment in Gucheng Lake,Jiangsu province,China.The results showed that fermented protein could significantly increase mean weight gain,crab size and total yield compared with control group.Moreover,the mean weight of male crabs and the number of large-sized male crabs improved over those of the control group.However,feed efficiency ratio did not differ significantly between the two groups.The amino acid content in the muscles of the female crabs of both the groups was higher than that in the muscles of the male crabs.The present study suggests that fermented compound protein may be one kind of potential protein sources for E.sinensis.