Oxidation-reduction process

Abstract: Nitrogen (N) is one of the essential macronutrients that plays an important role in plant growth and development. Unfortunately, low utilization rate of nitrogen has become one of the main abiotic factors affecting crop growth. Nevertheless, little research has been done on the molecular mechanism of wheat seedlings resisting or adapting to low nitrogen environment. In this paper, the response of wheat seedlings against low nitrogen stress at phenotypic changes and gene expression level were studied. The results showed that plant height, leaf area, shoot and root dry weight, total root length, and number under low nitrogen stress decreased by 26.0, 28.1, 24.3, 38.0, 41.4, and 21.2 percent, respectively compared with plants under normal conditions. 2265 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected in roots and 2083 DEGs were detected in leaves under low nitrogen stress (N-) compared with the control (CK). 1688 genes were up-regulated and 577 genes were down-regulated in roots, whilst 505 genes were up-regulated and 1578 were down-regulated in leaves. Among the most addressed Gene Ontology (GO) categories, oxidation reduction process, oxidoreductase activity, and cell component were mostly represented. In addition, genes involved in the signal transduction, carbon and nitrogen metabolism, antioxidant activity, and environmental adaptation were highlighted. Our study provides new information for further understanding the response of wheat to low nitrogen stress.

Abstract: The influence of reduction-oxidation-reduction (ROR) pretreatment on 20% Co/SiO2 has been investigated using different oxidizing gases including water vapor and oxygen in the oxidation step. In this study, the evolution concerning the SiO2 structure and the cobalt phase and morphology is clearly elucidated at each step of reduction, oxidation and subsequent re-reduction. It is demonstrated that ROR treatment using both oxygen and water vapor decreases the average cobalt particle size. However, the catalytic performance affected in FTS is considerably different. ROR treatment in oxygen results in an increase in catalytic activity. In contrast, the water vapor applied in oxidation step obviously deactivates cobalt catalyst and enhances selectivity of methane. The resulting deactivation is ascribed to the promoted formation of irreducible cobalt silicate through the reaction between water vapor caused surface Si OH groups and oxidized cobalt (CoO) in spite of unchanged surface area and pore structure on SiO2. The characterization data reveals that the re-dispersion of cobalt particles occurs at oxidation step rather than the re-reduction step. In addition, the results indicate that the ROR treatment reducing the cobalt particle size depends on its initial size as no re-dispersion can be observed in the case of particles smaller than about 11 nm. Furthermore, the water vapor shows more effective re-dispersion in cobalt particles compared with the use of oxygen. This study provides fundamental insights into the control of catalytic activity, product selectivity, and catalyst stability over supported cobalt catalysts by understanding the evolution of catalyst structure through ROR treatment in different chemical environment.

Abstract: Insulin resistance (IR) is associated with increased production of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins of intestinal origin. In order to assess whether insulin resistance affects the proteins involved in lipid metabolism, we used two mass spectrometry based quantitative proteomics techniques to compare the intestinal proteome of 14 IR patients to that of 15 insulin sensitive (IS) control patients matched for age and waist circumference. A total of 3886 proteins were identified by the iTRAQ (Isobaric Tags for Relative and Absolute Quantitation) mass spectrometry approach and 2290 by the SWATH-MS strategy (Serial Window Acquisition of Theoretical Spectra). Using these two methods, 208 common proteins were identified with a confidence corresponding to FDR < 1%, and quantified with p-value < 0.05. The quantification of those 208 proteins has a Pearson correlation coefficient (r2) of 0.728 across the two techniques. Gene Ontology analyses of the differentially expressed proteins revealed that annotations related to lipid metabolic process and oxidation reduction process are overly represented in the set of under-expressed proteins in IR subjects. Furthermore, both methods quantified proteins of relevance to IR. These data also showed that SWATH-MS is a promising and compelling alternative to iTRAQ for protein quantitation of complex mixtures.