Tussah silkmoth pupae improve anti-tumor properties of Cordyceps militaris (L.) Link by increasing the levels of major metabolite cordycepin

Sustainable treatment of aquaculture water employing fungi-microalgae consortium: Nutrients removal enhancement, bacterial communities optimization, emerging contaminants elimination, and mechanism analysis

Fungi-microalgae consortium (FMC) has emerged as a promising system for advanced wastewater treatment due to its high biomass yield and environmental sustainability. This study aimed to investigate the nutrients removal, bacterial community shift, emerging contaminants elimination, and treatment mechanism of a FMC composed of Cordyceps militaris and Navicula seminulum for aquaculture pond water treatment. The fungi and microalgae were cultured and employed either alone or in combination to evaluate the treatment performance. The results demonstrated that the FMC could improve water quality more significantly by reducing nutrient pollutants and optimizing the bacterial community structures. Furthermore, it exhibited stronger positive correlation between the enrichment of functional bacteria for water quality improvement and pollutants removal performance than the single-species treatments. Moreover, the FMC outperformed other groups in eliminating emerging contaminants such as heavy metals, antibiotics, and pathogenic Vibrios. Superiorly, the FMC also showed excellent symbiotic interactions and cooperative mechanisms for pollutants removal. The results collectively corroborated the feasibility and sustainability of using C. militaris and N. seminulum for treating aquaculture water, and the FMC would produce more mutualistic benefits and synergistic effects than single-species treatments.

Antitumor Mechanism and Therapeutic Potential of Cordycepin Derivatives

Cordycepin has good antitumor activity, but its clinical application is limited due to the easy deamination of N6 in structure. In this study, a large lipolysis group was introduced at the cordycepin N6 to improve the problem, cordycepin derivatives (3a-4c) were synthesized, and biological evaluation of compounds was studied. In this study, the vitro antitumor activity of the compounds against MCF7 cells, HepG2 cells and SGC-7901 cells was evaluated by MTT assay. In the results, compound 4a showed the most obvious inhibitory effect on MCF7 cells with an IC50 value of 27.57 ± 0.52 μM, which was much lower than cordycepin. Compound 4a showed high selectivity between MCF7 and normal MCF-10A cells. Further biological evaluation showed that compound 4a promoted apoptosis and blocked the cell cycle in the G0/G1 phase. Then, Western Blot was used to detect related apoptotic proteins. It was found that Compound 4a could down-regulate the expression of Bcl-2 protein and up-regulate the expression of p53, Bax, Caspase-3 and Caspase-9 proteins. The mitochondrial membrane potential decreased continuously and the positive expression rate decreased. It was speculated that compound 4a induced the apoptosis of MCF7 cells through the mitochondrial pathway.

Metabolomics based on GC-MS revealed hub metabolites of pecan seeds germinating at different temperatures

BACKGROUND

As an important plant source of food and edible oils, pecans are rich in metabolites. Few studies have focused on metabolites involved in pecan seed germination at different temperatures.

RESULTS

In our study, we germinated pecan seeds at different temperatures and found that, the germination rate and water content were highest at 30°C. It was found that the radicle of pecan seeds could sense seed coat cracking by observing the microstructure and cell ultra-structure of the seeds at the early stage of germination. We compared the metabolomes of seeds at different temperatures with different germination processes. A total of 349 metabolites were identified, including 138 primary metabolites and 211 secondary metabolites. KEGG enrichment analysis indicated that the differential metabolites were mainly enriched in the metabolic pathways, amino acid synthesis pathways and ABC transporters. Using weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), three modules of closely related metabolites were identified. In the brown module, most of hub metabolites were amino substances, whereas in the blue module, many hub metabolites were sugars.

CONCLUSIONS

Amino acids and carbohydrates play an important role in pecan seed germination. Differential metaboliteanalysis showed that 30°C was the temperature at which metabolites differed most significantly. This study provides useful information for further research on the seedling establishment of pecan seeds.

Cordyceps mushroom with increased cordycepin content by the cultivation on edible insects

Cordycepin is the major constituent of Cordyceps mushroom (or Cordyceps militaris) with therapeutic potential. Insects are the direct sources of nutrients for Cordyceps in nature. Therefore, optimized condition of Cordyceps cultivation for efficient cordycepin production was explored using six edible insects as substrates. The highest yield of cordycepin was produced by the cultivation on Allomyrina dichotoma and was 34 times that on Bombyx mori pupae. Among insect components, fat content was found to be important for cordycepin production. Especially, a positive correlation was deduced between oleic acid content and cordycepin production. The transcriptional levels of cns1 and cns2, genes involved in cordycepin biosynthesis, were higher in Cordyceps grown on A. dichotoma than on other insects tested. The addition of oleic acid to the substrates increased cordycepin production together with the transcriptional levels of cns1 and cns2. Therefore, Cordyceps with high content of cordycepin can be secured by the cultivation on insects.