Deling Wu

Semen Cuscutae is commonly used as a medicinal and edible functional food ingredient. Salt-processing can significantly alter its sensory quality and endogenous components. Currently, salt-processed Semen Cuscutae mainly adopts hyperoside as the quality evaluation indicator, which fails to meet the requirements for the identification of processing intensity (heat level) during the development of the traditional Chinese medicine industry. This study aims to construct a comprehensive quality evaluation framework for identifying the optimal processing degree of salt-processed Semen Cuscutae. Multi-dimensional bionic technologies including machine vision, electronic nose and electronic tongue, combined with HPLC and GC-IMS, were applied to analyze the changes in sensory characteristics and endogenous components of salt-processed Semen Cuscutae across different processing degrees. Characteristic indicators were comprehensively scored using the AHP-TOPSIS method. Compared with other groups, appropriately processed salt-processed Semen Cuscutae exhibited a brown appearance, significantly different W1W/W2W sensor responses, resulting in a more harmonious taste profile and distinct volatile chemical markers. Further correlation analysis was performed among bionic sensing indicators, endogenous components and GC-IMS-derived volatile data. AHP-TOPSIS results demonstrated that salt-processed Semen Cuscutae with an appropriate processing degree exhibits optimal comprehensive quality. The comprehensive quality evaluation framework established in this study provides scientific support for the process control and quality assessment of Semen Cuscutae as a functional food ingredient, and also offers a methodological reference for the processing evaluation of similar medicinal and edible food materials.

Cannabis fructus (CF) has been used as a functional food raw material. The rapid identification of its processing degree is vital for ensuring consistency of product quality, achieving standardized processing, and maintaining market authenticity. This study established an intelligent identification method for the processing degree of stir-fried CF based on multi-source information fusion and machine learning. Color (L, a, b) and odor signals of the samples were collected through machine vision and electronic nose systems. The total contents of fatty oil and trigonelline were determined. Among the evaluated models, XGBoost demonstrated superior performance, achieving near-perfect training accuracy (93.62%) and test accuracy (91.67%). Shapley Additive Explanations analysis revealed that color and signals from specific odor sensors were key distinguishing features. The color exhibited a gradual transition to light yellow, and total fat and oil content showed a likely positive correlation with a and b values. The content of senna alkaloids tended to reduce as frying proceeded to greater intensity. This work preliminarily uncovered the correlations among color, gas characteristics, and quality, and could provide new insights for intelligent monitoring of the preparation procedure.

Phytochemical investigation of the edible fungus Poria cocos (Poria cum Radix Pini, PRP) led to the isolation and identification of 40 lanostane-type triterpenoids (LTDs), including seven new LTDs. Six LTDs (2, 5, 14, 17, 23, 36) exhibited antimelanogenic activity in B16F10 cells and zebrafish. Structure-activity relationship analysis revealed that an α-oriented hydroxyl at C-3, absence of C-16 hydroxyl, and free C-3 hydroxyl are critical for high activity. LTD 14 suppressed melanogenesis by inhibiting the ERK pathway, downregulating MITF and tyrosinase. Molecular docking and dynamics predicted stable binding to tyrosinase, which was confirmed by SPR (KD = 148 nM). Additionally, MALDI-MSI was employed for the first time to spatially map the distribution of bioactive triterpenoids directly in P. cocos tissue, revealing that whitening-active LTDs 14, 17, and 23 are widely distributed across different anatomical parts. This study establishes an integrated paradigm from structural discovery to spatial mapping for edible bioresource development.

Bronchial asthma (BA) is regarded as one of the most prevalent chronic respiratory diseases worldwide. Yanghe Pingchuan Granules (YPG), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) compound, has been employed extensively in treating BA. However, the precise mechanism by which it exerts its therapeutic effects remains to be fully elucidated. This study aimed to investigate the therapeutic mechanisms of YPG in BA model rats, focusing on the interventional effects on cellular senescence of airway smooth muscle cells (ASMCs) in vivo and in vitro. In this study, OVA was utilized to induce the replication of an asthmatic rat model, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) was employed to identify ASMCs, and a series of in vitro experiments were conducted. These experiments included β-galactosidase (β-gal), Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), biochemical assay, western blotting, Co-Immunoprecipitation (CO-IP), overexpression/silencing of Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) and Nuclear factor E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) was studied in ASMCs. Subsequently, Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E), Masson, Alcian Blue-Periodic Acid Schiff (AB-PAS), ELISA, biochemical assay, western blotting, Co-Immunofluorescence (CO-IF), and CO-IP were employed to examine the histopathological damage, acetylation, oxidative stress, senescence-related protein expression, and senescence-associated secretion phenotype (SASP) secretion of bronchial tubes in asthmatic rats. This comprehensive approach was undertaken to elucidate the mechanism by which YPG inhibits the senescence of ASMCs. The results of in vivo and in vitro experiments demonstrated that SIRT1 overexpression and YPG inhibited the senescence of ASMCs and significantly reduced P16 and P21 proteins, as well as cellular SASP (Interleukin-1β (IL-1β), Interleukin-4 (IL-4), and Interleukin-17 (IL-17)). Moreover, YPG demonstrated a substantial reduction in histopathological alterations in BA rats. Furthermore, the study observed a decline in Malondialdehyde (MDA) expression, concomitant with an augmentation in the expression levels of SIRT1, Nrf2, oxygenase-1 (HO-1), Superoxide dismutase (SOD), and Catalase (CAT). It substantiated the interaction of SIRT1 with Nrf2 and the decrease in the expression level of Nrf2 acetylation. These results suggest that YPG can activate the SIRT1/Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway by regulating the expression level of SIRT1 to regulating the acetylated expression level of Nrf2, to inhibit the senescence of ASMCs, leading to the treatment of asthma.

Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa Andr) is an ornamental and medicinal plant in China. The root cortex of peony has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for alleviating fever and dissipating blood stasis. The medicinal peony is mainly produced in Tongling, Anhui Province, China, and it is also called "Fengdan". In November 2021, we collected peony plants with root rot disease from several fields in Tongling county, Anhui Province, China (118°0'51" E, 30°48'11" N). Approximately 20 to 40 percent of peony plants were affected in the fields, which caused a decline in the quality and yield of this plant. The plant sample with rotted and blacked root was rinsed in tap water to remove soil debris, and small pieces (5 mm×5 mm) were cut from the diseased tissues, disinfected with 0.5% NaClO solution and 75% ethanol for 5 min, rinsed in sterilized distilled water three times, and placed on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium at 28°C. Ten isolates with different morphological characteristics were obtained from the diseased tissues. Among the isolates, Pleiocarpon algeriense B4 was confirmed to be a pathogenic agent inducing peony root rot in our previous work (Ni et al. 2023). And another pure isolate B9 colony was yellow-green, loose in structure and soft to cotton-like in texture. Microscopic examination showed that conidia were spherical with smooth or rough surface, and diameter of 2.34 - 6.85 μm (n = 20). Based on these morphological characteristics, the isolates are consistent with the description of the genus Aspergillus (Samson et al. 2014). To confirm the identification, genomic DNA was extracted, and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, beta-tubulin (TUB2), and the calmodulin (CaM) genes were amplified using the primer pair ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), Bt2a/Bt2b (Hong et al. 2006), and CMD5/CMD6 (Glass et al. 1995), respectively. The sequence lengths obtained by amplification were 551, 566 and 613 bp, respectively. Sequences were deposited in GenBenk (OP810685, ITS; OQ753104, TUB2; OQ753105, CaM). BLAST analysis showed the ITS, TUB2, CaM sequences of B9 were 100.00%, 100.00% and 99.14% homology with those of A. flavus NB16 (MF685311, ITS); A. flavus CMXY30197 (MG991395, TUB2) and A. flavus CMXY8113 (MG991523, CaM), respectively. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using MEGA11 software based on ITS, TUB2, and CaM sequences. The results indicated that B9 strain was closely clustered with the reference strain of A. flavus. Thus, based on morphological and molecular characteristics, B9 was identified as A. flavus. Pathogenicity tests were performed on one-year-old peony seedlings. The ten healthy peonies were inoculated with 50 mL of suspension (1 × 108 CFU/mL). Ten healthy peonies irrigated with 50 mL of sterile water were used as control pots. After one-month, root rot symptoms appeared on inoculated plants, whereas control plants remained asymptomatic. To perform Koch's postulates, the fungus was reisolated from the diseased roots and identified as A. flavus. To our knowledge, this is the first report of peony root rot caused by A. flavus in Tongling, China. This species was previously reported causing fruit rot on kiwifruit in China (Zhu et al. 2022) and grapes in Pakistan (Zhu et al. 2020). This finding should be considered for developing efficient management strategies for peony root rot disease.