MyMedR

Displaying all 7 publications

Abstract:

Sort:

Fulltext Extraction of non-starch lipid from protease-treated wheat flour

Abdul Manan SF, Li J, Hsieh CF, Faubion J, Shi YC

J Sci Food Agric, 2022 Mar 30;102(5):2172-2178.
PMID: 34498279 DOI: 10.1002/jsfa.11523

BACKGROUND: Lipids account for 2.0-2.5% of wheat flour by dry weight and affect properties and quality of cereal foods. A new method was developed to extract non-starch lipids from wheat flour. Wheat flour was first hydrolyzed with a protease and followed by extraction of non-starch lipids by water-saturated butanol (WSB).
RESULT: Protein hydrolysis by protease followed by extraction of non-starch lipids with WSB increased yield to 1.9 ± 0.3% from 1.0 ± 0.1% with no protease treatment. The lipid profile showed a significant increase in phospholipid compounds extracted with protease hydrolysis (5.9 ± 0.8 nmol·g-1 ) versus without enzymatic treatment (2.4 ± 1.3 nmol g-1 ).
CONCLUSION: Improved lipid extraction yield and phospholipid compounds following protease-assisted extraction method provided additional insight towards the understanding of protein-lipid interaction in wheat flour. The new protease-assisted extraction method may be applied to analyzing non-starch lipids in other types of wheat flours and other cereal flours. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.
Fulltext Rosmarinic acid exhibits broad anti-enterovirus A71 activity by inhibiting the interaction between the five-fold axis of capsid VP1 and cognate sulfated receptors

Hsieh CF, Jheng JR, Lin GH, Chen YL, Ho JY, Liu CJ, et al.

Emerg Microbes Infect, 2020 Dec;9(1):1194-1205.
PMID: 32397909 DOI: 10.1080/22221751.2020.1767512

Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71), a positive-stranded RNA virus of the Picornaviridae family, may cause neurological complications or fatality in children. We examined specific factors responsible for this virulence using a chemical genetics approach. Known compounds from an anti-EV-A71 herbal medicine, Salvia miltiorrhiza (Danshen), were screened for anti-EV-A71. We identified a natural product, rosmarinic acid (RA), as a potential inhibitor of EV-A71 by cell-based antiviral assay and in vivo mouse model. Results also show that RA may affect the early stage of viral infection and may target viral particles directly, thereby interfering with virus-P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL1) and virus-heparan sulfate interactions without abolishing the interaction between the virus and scavenger receptor B2 (SCARB2). Sequencing of the plaque-purified RA-resistant viruses revealed a N104K mutation in the five-fold axis of the structural protein VP1, which contains positively charged amino acids reportedly associated with virus-PSGL1 and virus-heparan sulfate interactions via electrostatic attraction. The plasmid-derived recombinant virus harbouring this mutation was confirmed to be refractory to RA inhibition. Receptor pull-down showed that this non-positively charged VP1-N104 is critical for virus binding to heparan sulfate. As the VP1-N104 residue is conserved among different EV-A71 strains, RA may be useful for inhibiting EV-A71 infection, even for emergent virus variants. Our study provides insight into the molecular mechanism of virus-host interactions and identifies a promising new class of inhibitors based on its antiviral activity and broad spectrum effects against a range of EV-A71.
Climate sensitive size-dependent survival in tropical trees

Johnson DJ, Needham J, Xu C, Massoud EC, Davies SJ, Anderson-Teixeira KJ, et al.

Nat Ecol Evol, 2018 09;2(9):1436-1442.
PMID: 30104751 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0626-z

Survival rates of large trees determine forest biomass dynamics. Survival rates of small trees have been linked to mechanisms that maintain biodiversity across tropical forests. How species survival rates change with size offers insight into the links between biodiversity and ecosystem function across tropical forests. We tested patterns of size-dependent tree survival across the tropics using data from 1,781 species and over 2 million individuals to assess whether tropical forests can be characterized by size-dependent life-history survival strategies. We found that species were classifiable into four 'survival modes' that explain life-history variation that shapes carbon cycling and the relative abundance within forests. Frequently collected functional traits, such as wood density, leaf mass per area and seed mass, were not generally predictive of the survival modes of species. Mean annual temperature and cumulative water deficit predicted the proportion of biomass of survival modes, indicating important links between evolutionary strategies, climate and carbon cycling. The application of survival modes in demographic simulations predicted biomass change across forest sites. Our results reveal globally identifiable size-dependent survival strategies that differ across diverse systems in a consistent way. The abundance of survival modes and interaction with climate ultimately determine forest structure, carbon storage in biomass and future forest trajectories.
The interspecific growth-mortality trade-off is not a general framework for tropical forest community structure

Russo SE, McMahon SM, Detto M, Ledder G, Wright SJ, Condit RS, et al.

Nat Ecol Evol, 2021 Feb;5(2):174-183.
PMID: 33199870 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-01340-9

Resource allocation within trees is a zero-sum game. Unavoidable trade-offs dictate that allocation to growth-promoting functions curtails other functions, generating a gradient of investment in growth versus survival along which tree species align, known as the interspecific growth-mortality trade-off. This paradigm is widely accepted but not well established. Using demographic data for 1,111 tree species across ten tropical forests, we tested the generality of the growth-mortality trade-off and evaluated its underlying drivers using two species-specific parameters describing resource allocation strategies: tolerance of resource limitation and responsiveness of allocation to resource access. Globally, a canonical growth-mortality trade-off emerged, but the trade-off was strongly observed only in less disturbance-prone forests, which contained diverse resource allocation strategies. Only half of disturbance-prone forests, which lacked tolerant species, exhibited the trade-off. Supported by a theoretical model, our findings raise questions about whether the growth-mortality trade-off is a universally applicable organizing framework for understanding tropical forest community structure.
Fulltext Interactions between all pairs of neighboring trees in 16 forests worldwide reveal details of unique ecological processes in each forest, and provide windows into their evolutionary histories

Wills C, Wang B, Fang S, Wang Y, Jin Y, Lutz J, et al.

PLoS Comput Biol, 2021 Apr;17(4):e1008853.
PMID: 33914731 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008853

When Darwin visited the Galapagos archipelago, he observed that, in spite of the islands' physical similarity, members of species that had dispersed to them recently were beginning to diverge from each other. He postulated that these divergences must have resulted primarily from interactions with sets of other species that had also diverged across these otherwise similar islands. By extrapolation, if Darwin is correct, such complex interactions must be driving species divergences across all ecosystems. However, many current general ecological theories that predict observed distributions of species in ecosystems do not take the details of between-species interactions into account. Here we quantify, in sixteen forest diversity plots (FDPs) worldwide, highly significant negative density-dependent (NDD) components of both conspecific and heterospecific between-tree interactions that affect the trees' distributions, growth, recruitment, and mortality. These interactions decline smoothly in significance with increasing physical distance between trees. They also tend to decline in significance with increasing phylogenetic distance between the trees, but each FDP exhibits its own unique pattern of exceptions to this overall decline. Unique patterns of between-species interactions in ecosystems, of the general type that Darwin postulated, are likely to have contributed to the exceptions. We test the power of our null-model method by using a deliberately modified data set, and show that the method easily identifies the modifications. We examine how some of the exceptions, at the Wind River (USA) FDP, reveal new details of a known allelopathic effect of one of the Wind River gymnosperm species. Finally, we explore how similar analyses can be used to investigate details of many types of interactions in these complex ecosystems, and can provide clues to the evolution of these interactions.
Temporal population variability in local forest communities has mixed effects on tree species richness across a latitudinal gradient

Fung T, Chisholm RA, Anderson-Teixeira K, Bourg N, Brockelman WY, Bunyavejchewin S, et al.

Ecol Lett, 2020 Jan;23(1):160-171.
PMID: 31698546 DOI: 10.1111/ele.13412

Among the local processes that determine species diversity in ecological communities, fluctuation-dependent mechanisms that are mediated by temporal variability in the abundances of species populations have received significant attention. Higher temporal variability in the abundances of species populations can increase the strength of temporal niche partitioning but can also increase the risk of species extinctions, such that the net effect on species coexistence is not clear. We quantified this temporal population variability for tree species in 21 large forest plots and found much greater variability for higher latitude plots with fewer tree species. A fitted mechanistic model showed that among the forest plots, the net effect of temporal population variability on tree species coexistence was usually negative, but sometimes positive or negligible. Therefore, our results suggest that temporal variability in the abundances of species populations has no clear negative or positive contribution to the latitudinal gradient in tree species richness.
Demographic composition, not demographic diversity, predicts biomass and turnover across temperate and tropical forests

Needham JF, Johnson DJ, Anderson-Teixeira KJ, Bourg N, Bunyavejchewin S, Butt N, et al.

Glob Chang Biol, 2022 Jan 25.
PMID: 35080088 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16100

The growth and survival of individual trees determine the physical structure of a forest with important consequences for forest function. However, given the diversity of tree species and forest biomes, quantifying the multitude of demographic strategies within and across forests and the way that they translate into forest structure and function remains a significant challenge. Here, we quantify the demographic rates of 1,961 tree species from temperate and tropical forests and evaluate how demographic diversity (DD) and demographic composition (DC) differ across forests, and how these differences in demography relate to species richness, aboveground biomass, and carbon residence time. We find wide variation in DD and DC across forest plots, patterns that are not explained by species richness or climate variables alone. There is no evidence that DD has an effect on either aboveground biomass or carbon residence time. Rather, the DC of forests, specifically the relative abundance of large statured species, predicted both biomass and carbon residence time. Our results demonstrate the distinct demographic compositions of globally distributed forests, reflecting biogeography, recent history, and current plot conditions. Linking the demographic composition of forests to resilience or vulnerability to climate change, will improve the precision and accuracy of predictions of future forest composition, structure and function.