A nucleoprotein-enriched diet suppresses dopaminergic neuronal cell loss and motor deficit in mice with MPTP-induced Parkinson's disease

Dental follicle cells show potential for treating Parkinson's disease through dopaminergic-neuronogenic differentiation

Among all the adult stem cells, odontogenic stem cells inherit the characterization of neurogenic potential of their precursor ones-the cranial crest cells. Dental follicle cells (DFCs), one of the special kind of odontogenic stem cells, are raising interest in applying to regenerative medicine for they possess multi-differentiation potential, relatively free access and ethic-friendly characteristic. Parkinson's disease (PD), as one of the common neurodegenerative disorders, affects about 0.3% of the general population. Stem cell therapies are thought to be effective to treat it. Aiming at tackling ethical-concernings, confined sources and practically applicational limits, we made use of dopaminergic neurongenic differentiation potential of the DFCs and dedicated every effort to applying them as promising cell source for treating PD. Dental follicle cells were cultured from human dental follicle tissues collected from 12 to 18-year-old teenagers' completely impacted third molars. Our data demonstrated that hDFCs were expressing mesenchymal stem cell-associated surface markers, and possessed the ability of osteogenic, adipogenic and neurogenic differentiation in vitro. Additionally, hDFCs formed neuron-like cells in vitro and in vivo, as well as expressing dopaminergic-neuronogenic marker-TH. Moreover, hDFCs survived in the transplanted areas of the Parkinson's disease model of mouse over six weeks post-surgery, and the number of TH-positive DFCs in the DFCs-Grafted group surpassed its counterpart of the MPTP group with statistically significant difference. This study indicated that hDFCs might be a promising source of dopaminergic neurons for functional transplantation, and encouraged further detailed studies on the potential of hDFCs for treating PD.

High concentration of extracellular nucleotides suppresses cell growth via delayed cell cycle progression in cancer and noncancer cell lines

Tumor necrosis frequently occurs in malignant tumors, showing rapid growth and invasion. This phenomenon is generally regarded as simple ischemic necrosis due to insufficient tumor vessels and blood supply. However, the necrotic tissue contains high amount of nuclear substances, DNA, and nucleoproteins that may affect the surrounding tumor cells by promoting or suppressing the tumor cell growth in vivo. This study focused on the effects of an externally administered water-soluble nuclear crude extract (SNE) containing nuclear protein and oligonucleotides on several human cancer and noncancer cell lines. The results demonstrated that the SNE suppressed cell growth in cancer and noncancer cells in vitro. Through the flow cytometry analysis of the nuclear DNA content, it was observed that the SNE increased and decreased cell proportion in the S and G2/M phases, respectively, thereby suggesting that the cell growth inhibition was due to cell cycle delay, and not due to apoptosis. These studies suggest that the high-concentration of extracellular nucleotides generated as a result of tumor necrosis and/or released from infiltrated neutrophils could suppress the growth of surrounding cancer and intrinsic cells, which provides us some insights into an alternative anticancer strategy for patients with highly malignant necrotic tumor.

Ameliorative Role of Nutraceuticals on Neurodegenerative Diseases Using the Drosophila melanogaster as a Discovery Model to Define Bioefficacy

Neurodegeneration is the destruction of neurons, and once the neurons degenerate they can't revive. This is one of the most concerned health conditions among aged population, more than ∼70% of the elderly people are suffering from neurodegeneration. Among all of the neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Poly-glutamine disease (Poly-Q) are the major one and affecting most of the people around the world and posing excessive burden on the society. In order to understand this disease in non-human animal models it is pertinent to examine in model organism and various animal model are being used for such diseases like rat, mice and non-vertebrate model like Drosophila. Drosophila melanogaster is one of the best animal proven by several eminent scientist and had received several Nobel prizes for uncovering mechanism of human related genes and highly efficient model for studying neurodegenerative diseases due to its great affinity with human disease-related genes. Another factor is also employed to act as therapeutic or preventive method that is nutraceuticals. Nutraceuticals are functional natural compounds with antioxidant properties and had extensively showed the neuroprotective effect in different organisms. These nutraceuticals having antioxidant properties act through scavenging free radicals or by increasing endogenous cellular antioxidant defense molecules. For the best benefit, we are trying to utilize these nutraceuticals, which will have no or negligible side effects. In this review, we are dealing with various types of such nutraceuticals which have potent value in the prevention and curing of the diseases related to neurodegeneration.HighlightsNeurodegeneration is the silently progressing disease which shows its symptoms when it is well rooted.Many chemical drugs (almost all) have only symptomatic relief with side effects.Potent mechanism of neurodegeneration and improvement effect by nutraceuticals is proposed.Based on the Indian Cuisine scientists are trying to find the medicine from the food or food components having antioxidant properties.The best model to study the neurodegenerative diseases is Drosophila melanogaster.Many nutraceuticals having antioxidant properties have been studied and attenuated various diseases are discussed.

Nucleoprotein-enriched diet enhances protein synthesis pathway and satellite cell activation via ERK1/2 phosphorylation in unloaded rat muscles

NEW FINDINGS

What is the central question of this study? The purpose of this study was to determine whether the nucleotides in a nucleoprotein-enriched diet could ameliorate the unloading-associated decrease in soleus muscle mass and fibre size. What is the main finding and its importance? The results indicate that the nucleotides in the nucleoprotein-enriched diet could ameliorate the unloading-associated decrease in type I fibre size and muscle mass, most probably owing to the activation of protein synthesis pathways and satellite cell proliferation and differentiation via ERK1/2 phosphorylation. Thus, nucleotide supplementation appears to be an effective countermeasure for muscle atrophy.

ABSTRACT

Hindlimb unloading decreases both the protein synthesis pathway and satellite cell activation and results in muscle atrophy. Nucleotides are included in nucleoprotein and provide the benefits of increasing extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) 1/2 phosphorylation. ERK1/2 phosphorylation is also important in the activation of satellite cells, especially for myoblast proliferation and stimulating protein synthesis pathways. Therefore, we hypothesized that nucleotides in the nucleoproteins would ameliorate muscle atrophy by increasing the protein synthesis pathways and satellite cell activation during hindlimb unloading in rat soleus muscle. Twenty-four female Wistar rats were divided into four groups: control rats fed a basal diet without nucleoprotein (CON), control rats fed a nucleoprotein-enriched diet (CON+NP), hindlimb-unloaded rats fed a basal diet (HU) or hindlimb-unloaded rats fed a nucleoprotein-enriched diet (HU+NP). HU for 2 weeks resulted in reductions in phosphorylation of p70S6K and rpS6, the numbers of myoblast determination protein (MyoD)- and myogenin- positive nuclei, type I muscle fibre size and muscle mass. Both CON+NP and HU+NP rats showed an increase in ERK1/2, phosphorylation of p70S6K and rpS6, and the numbers of MyoD- and myogenin-positive nuclei compared with their basal diet groups. The NP diet also ameliorated the unloading-associated decrease in type I muscle fibre size and muscle mass. The results indicate that the nucleotides in the nucleoprotein-enriched diet could ameliorate the unloading-associated decrease in type I fibre size and muscle mass, most probably owing to the activation of protein synthesis pathways and satellite cell proliferation and differentiation via ERK1/2 phosphorylation. Thus, nucleotide supplementation appears to be an effective countermeasure for muscle atrophy.

Neuroprotection of Fasting Mimicking Diet on MPTP-Induced Parkinson's Disease Mice via Gut Microbiota and Metabolites

Parkinson's disease (PD) is strongly associated with life style, especially dietary habits, which have gained attention as disease modifiers. Here, we report a fasting mimicking diet (FMD), fasting 3 days followed by 4 days of refeeding for three 1-week cycles, which accelerated the retention of motor function and attenuated the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra in 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrathydropyridine (MPTP)-induced PD mice. Levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), known to promote the survival of dopaminergic neurons, were increased in PD mice after FMD, suggesting an involvement of BDNF in FMD-mediated neuroprotection. Furthermore, FMD decreased the number of glial cells as well as the release of TNF-α and IL-1β in PD mice, showing that FMD also inhibited neuro-inflammation. 16S and 18S rRNA sequencing of fecal microbiota showed that FMD treatment modulated the shifts in gut microbiota composition, including higher abundance of Firmicutes, Tenericutes, and Opisthokonta and lower abundance of Proteobacteria at the phylum level in PD mice. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry revealed that FMD modulated the MPTP-induced lower propionic acid and isobutyric acid, and higher butyric acid and valeric acid and other metabolites. Transplantation of fecal microbiota, from normal mice with FMD treatment to antibiotic-pretreated PD mice increased dopamine levels in the recipient PD mice, suggesting that gut microbiota contributed to the neuroprotection of FMD for PD. These findings demonstrate that FMD can be a new means of preventing and treating PD through promoting a favorable gut microbiota composition and metabolites.

Behavioral and omics analyses study on potential involvement of dipeptide balenine through supplementation in diet of senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8

This study investigates effects of dipeptide balenine, as a major component of whale meat extract (hereafter, WME), supplementation on senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8), an Alzheimer's disease (AD) model at level of learning and memory formation and brain expression profiles genome-wide in brain. Mice fed experimental balenine (+ WME) supplemented diet for 26 weeks were subjected to four behavioral tests – open field, Y-maze, novel object recognition, and water-filled multiple T-maze – to examine effects on learning and memory. Brain transcriptome of SAMP8 mice-fed the WME diet over control low-safflower oil (LSO) diet-fed mice was delineated on a 4 × 44 K mouse whole genome DNA microarray chip. Results revealed the WME diet not only induced improvements in the learning and memory formation but also positively modulated changes in the brain of the SAMP8 mouse; the gene inventories are publically available for analysis by the scientific community. Interestingly, the SAMP8 mouse model presented many genetic characteristics of AD, and numerous novel molecules (Slc2a5, Treh, Fbp1, Aldob, Ppp1r1a, DNase1, Agxt2l1, Cyp2e1, Acsm1, Acsm2, and Pah) were revealed over the SAMR1 (senescence-accelerated mouse resistant 1) mouse, to be oppositely regulated/recovered under the balenine (+ WME) supplemented diet regime by DNA microarray and bioinformatics analyses. Our present study demonstrates an experimental strategy to understand the effects of dipeptide balenine, prominetly contained in meat diet, on SAMP8, providing new insight into whole brain transcriptome changes genome-wide. The gene expression data has been deposited into the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO): GSE76459. The data will be a valuable resource in examining the effects of natural products, and which could also serve as a human model for further functional analysis and investigation.

Nutraceuticals in Parkinson's Disease

Current pharmacological strategies for Parkinson’s disease (PD), the most common neurological movement disorder worldwide, are predominantly symptom relieving and are often plagued with undesirable side effects after prolonged treatment. Despite this, they remain as the mainstay treatment for PD due to the lack of better alternatives. Nutraceuticals are compounds derived from natural food sources that have certain therapeutic value and the advent of which has opened doors to the use of alternative strategies to tackle neurodegenerative diseases such as PD. Notably, nutraceuticals are able to position themselves as a “safer” strategy due to the fact that they are naturally derived compounds, therefore possibly having less side effects. Significant efforts have been put into better comprehending the role of nutraceuticals in PD, and we will look at some of them in this review. Broadly speaking, these compounds execute their positive effects via modulating signalling pathways, inhibiting oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis, as well as regulating mitochondrial homoeostasis. Importantly, we will highlight how a component of green tea, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), confers neuroprotection in PD via its ability to activate AMP kinase and articulate how its beneficial effects in PD are possibly due to enhancing mitochondrial quality control.