The paper studied some questions about a population that was always forced a mating of whole homologous phenotypes at the beginning of a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium state. The joint probability distribution between a female genotypes and its descendant genotypes was deduced on the population; its descendant genotypic conditional entropy gradually reduced when a female genotypes could be known; the mutual information between a female genotypes and its descendant genotypes would gradually reduce after enough generations and tend to be a definite vaule- p ln p - q ln q , and the population could reach a non-equilibrium steady state out of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium state. The mathematical simulation results illustrated the correctness of the obtained conclusions.
Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform(TCMSP) and Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine(BATMAN-TCM) were searched for the effective components and targets of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction. The relevant targets for endometriosis(EMT) and dysmenorrhea were retrieved from the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database(CTD), Therapeutic Target Database(TTD), GeneCards, and DisGeNET with the terms of "endometriosis" and "dysmenorrhea". Cytoscape 3.8.0 was employed to construct the drug-active component-therapeutic target network. A protein-protein interaction(PPI) network was established by STRING 11.0. Analyze Network, the plug-in in the Cytoscape 3.8.0, was used to calculate the topological parameters of the nodes and screen out the critical proteins in the network. The potential therapeutic targets were imported into RStudio and subjected to Gene Ontology(GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG) enrichment analyses with clusterProfiler package. Finally, the AutoDock Vina(Vina) platform was used for molecular docking to predict the binding degree of the main active components of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction to key targets. As revealed by the screening results, 136 active components and 380 targets of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction were obtained. Additionally, there were 1 627 targets related to EMT and 142 targets related to dysmenorrhea with 107 common targets, and 42 potential therapeutic targets of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction for the treatment of EMT-induced dysmenorrhea. The targets such as interleukin 6(IL6) and prostaglandi-nendoperoxide synthase-2(PTGS2) were pivotal in the biological network of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction intervention in EMT-induced dysmenorrhea, which involved multiple signaling pathways, including inflammation, hormones, and those promoted cell proliferation [e.g., mitogen-activated protein kinase(MAPK) and phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase(PI3 K)-protein kinase B(AKT)]. The results of molecular docking showed that the active components of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction had good binding capacities to key targets such as IL6 and PTGS2. The findings of this study demonstrated that Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction could treat EMT-induced dysmenorrhea through multiple targets and multiple pathways, which could provide new ideas for investigating the underlying mechanism of Shaofu Zhuyu Decoction in the treatment of EMT-induced dysmenorrhea.
Focus Areas: Integrative Approaches to Care
Objective:
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is referred to as holistic or complementary and alternative medicine. Herbal remedy plays the main role of TCM. It has been widely used in preventive measures and treatment modalities for all stages of illness. Here is a retrospective case report about herb healing the kidney stone and improving type II diabetes and hypertension.
Peanut is one of the primary sources for vegetable oil worldwide, and enhancing oil content is the main objective in several peanut breeding programs of the world. Tightly linked markers are required for faster development of high oil content peanut varieties through genomics-assisted breeding (GAB), and association mapping is one of the promising approaches for discovery of such associated markers.An association mapping panel consisting of 292 peanut varieties extensively distributed in China was phenotyped for oil content and genotyped with 583 polymorphic SSR markers. These markers amplified 3663 alleles with an average of 6.28 alleles per locus. The structure, phylogenetic relationship, and principal component analysis (PCA) indicated two subgroups majorly differentiating based on geographic regions. Genome-wide association analysis identified 12 associated markers including one (AGGS1014_2) highly stable association controlling up to 9.94% phenotypic variance explained (PVE) across multiple environments. Interestingly, the frequency of the favorable alleles for 12 associated markers showed a geographic difference. Two associated markers (AGGS1014_2 and AHGS0798) with 6.90-9.94% PVE were verified to enhance oil content in an independent RIL population and also indicated selection during the breeding program.This study provided insights into the genetic basis of oil content in peanut and verified highly associated two SSR markers to facilitate marker-assisted selection for developing high-oil content breeding peanut varieties.
Scientific abstracts presented at the International Congress for Clinicians in Complementary & Integrative Medicine 2013 Based on more than 20 years’ clinical experience of integrative medicine in both China and America, using a series of experiential cases mainly of herbs/TCM intervention on kidney diseases and enhancing well-being, and from the perspective as a nephrologist, this paper presents the basic modalities of integrative medicine (IM) by describing the clinical skill of knowing how and when to use herbal/TCM intervention by applying the methodology of “disease-pattern combination” on how to make the drug-herb interaction achieve “mutual enhancement.” This paper also proposed a hypothesis about the “whole food herbal medicine” and discusses the importance of controlling the herb dosage and the cost-effectiveness of herbal remedies. Finally, this paper will share the basic, simpler method with medical doctors on how to learn herbs/TCM step by step.
Introduction Peanut ( Arachis hypogaea L.), also called groundnut is an important oil and cash crop grown widely in the world. The annual global production of groundnuts has increased to approximately 50 million tons, which provides a rich source of vegetable oils and proteins for humans. Low temperature (non-freezing) is one of the major factors restricting peanut growth, yield, and geographic distribution. Since the complexity of cold-resistance trait, the molecular mechanism of cold tolerance and related gene networks were largely unknown in peanut. Methods In this study, comparative transcriptomic analysis of two peanut cultivars (SLH vs. ZH12) with differential cold tolerance under low temperature (10°C) was performed using Oxford Nanopore Technology (ONT) platform. Results and discussion As a result, we identified 8,949 novel gene loci and 95,291 new/novel isoforms compared with the reference database. More differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were discovered in cold-sensitive cultivar (ZH12) than cold-tolerant cultivar (SLH), while more alternative splicing events were found in SLH compared to ZH12. Gene Ontology (GO) analyses of the common DEGs showed that the “response to stress”, “chloroplast part”, and “transcription factor activity” were the most enriched GO terms, indicating that photosynthesis process and transcription factors play crucial roles in cold stress response in peanut. We also detected a total of 708 differential alternative splicing genes (DASGs) under cold stress compared to normal condition. Intron retention (IR) and exon skipping (ES) were the most prevalent alternative splicing (AS) events. In total, 4,993 transcription factors and 292 splicing factors were detected, many of them had differential expression levels and/or underwent AS events in response to cold stress. Overexpression of two candidate genes (encoding trehalose-6-phosphatephosphatases, AhTPPs) in yeast improves cold tolerance. This study not only provides valuable resources for the study of cold resistance in peanut but also lay a foundation for genetic modification of cold regulators to enhance stress tolerance in crops
Odour in the atmosphere is usually characterized by an intermittent time series of high peaks and periods of low (or zero) concentrations. The peak-to-mean ratio (PMR) is commonly used to estimate short-term peaks from long-term averages to assess the odour impact. The objective of this study was to quantify the peak-to-mean ratio of odour intensity (PMR_OI) in the atmosphere near swine operations. Fifteen human assessors (sniffers) were trained to use an 8 point odour intensity scale to measure odour intensity in the ambient air near two swine operations. In each measurement session, the sniffers were placed 0° (in the direction of wind), 30°, and 45° from the wind directions at 100, 500, and 1000 m from the swine operations to sniff odour in the air every 10 s for 30 min. The results showed that odour in the atmosphere was intermittent. The intermittency (% of time when odour was detected) increased with the averaging time and decreased with the distance from the odour source and the direction from the wind. The measured intermittency ranged from 13% to 85%. The PMR_OI increased with the averaging time, the distance from the source, and the direction from the wind. In the wind direction, the largest difference in PMR_OI between 1 and 30 min averaging times was 68% (2.5 vs. 4.2), which occurred at 1000 m from the odour source under stability class B. The average PMR_OI increased from 1.5 at 100 m to 3.5 at 1000 m. Atmospheric stability had a noticeable effect on PMR_OI. At 1000 m, the 30 min PMR_OI decreased from 4.2 at stability class B (unstable) to 2.4 at E (slightly stable).