Zebo Huang

Guangdong Pharmaceutical University · School of Biosciences and Biopharmaceutics

As a model organism that has helped revolutionize life sciences, Caenorhabditis elegans has been increasingly used in nutrition research. Here we explore the tradeoffs between pros and cons of its use as a dietary model based primarily on literature review from the past decade. We first provide an overview of its experimental strengths as an animal...

Nature has provided not only naturally occurring “free” peptides but also cryptic peptides (“cryptides”)—bioactive peptide fragments encrypted in the structures of natural proteins. These peptide fragments can be released as functional peptides enzymatically or chemically during gastrointestinal digestion or food/pharmaceutical processing. In the l...

Oxidative stress results when the production of oxidants outweighs the capacity of the antioxidant defence mechanisms. This can lead to pathological conditions including cancer and neurodegeneration. Consequently, there is considerable interest in compounds with antioxidant activity, including those from natural sources. Here, we characterise the a...

Nostoc sphaeroides is a cyanobacterium traditionally used as food and medicine in the form of macrocolonies, the main supporting matrix of which is polysaccharides. Despite recent success in industrial-scale culture of colonial N. sphaeroides, biochemical and biofunctional information on the polysaccharides during colony production is lacking. Usin...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Crassostrea gigas Thunberg and other oysters have been traditionally used in China as folk remedies to invigorate the kidney and as natural aphrodisiacs to combat male impotence. Aim of the study: Erectile dysfunction (ED) has become a major health problem for the global ageing population. The aim of this study is...

Sea cucumbers have been used as food delicacies and traditional medicine for centuries, and their health benefits are partly attributed to their repertoire of proteins. Peptide preparations from the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus are reported to have in vitro antioxidant activities. Here we investigated the in vivo antioxidant capacity of AjPH...

The inherited polyglutamine (polyQ) expansion diseases are characterized by progressive accumulation of aggregation-prone polyQ proteins, which may provoke proteostasis imbalance and result in significant neurotoxicity. Using polyQ transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans models, we find that Kai-Xin-San (KXS), a well-known herbal formula traditionally us...

The hard clam Meretrix meretrix, which has been traditionally used as medicine and seafood, was used in this study to isolate antioxidant peptides. First, a peptide-rich extract was tested for its protective effect against paraquat-induced oxidative stress using the nematode model Caenorhabditis elegans. Then, three novel antioxidant peptides; MmP4...

Liver cells are easily damaged by oxidative stress during progression both in liver development and throughout adult life, resulting in tissue pathology that ranges from simple hepatitis to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. In this study, we determined the attenuation of oxidative stress in liver cells with pretreatment of rosmarinic acid (RA), whi...

The papain hydrolyzate prepared from purple sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus nudus) gonad exerts significant antioxidant activity. Through ultrafiltration, gel filtration and high performance liquid chromatography, the active fractions from the hydrolyzate were screened by alleviating paraquat-induced oxidative stress in Caenorhabditis elegans, and t...

Nostoc colonies have been used as food and medicine for centuries, and their main supporting matrix is polysaccharides, which helpNostoccells resist various environmental stresses including oxidative stress. Here we isolated a polysaccharide, nostoglycan, from culturedNostocsphaeroidescolonies and determined its physicochemical properties, which re...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common form of dementia and amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) aggregation is considered to be one of its main causes. Paeoniflorin has been previously shown to attenuate cognitive damage inflicted by exogenous Aβ protein. Using transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans models expressing human Aβ1-42, we demonstrate here that paeoniflorin...

Oxidative stress is known to impair architecture and function of cells, which may lead to various chronic diseases, and therefore therapeutic and nutritional interventions to reduce oxidative damages represent a viable strategy in the amelioration of oxidative stress-related disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases. Over the past decade, a v...

Glutamate excitotoxicity is associated with many neurological diseases, including cerebral ischemia and neurodegenerative diseases. Tanshinone IIA, a diterpenoid naphthoquinone from Salvia miltiorrhiza , has been shown to suppress presynaptic glutamate release, but its protective mechanism against glutamate-induced neurotoxicity is lacking. Using S...

The genus Dalbergia contains approximately 250 species with many valuable trees being destroyed by targeted and illegal logging. DNA barcoding is a reliable method for the molecular identification of different species and resources conservation. In the present study, the specimen discrimination ability of internal transcribed spacer (ITS), matK, rb...

Scorpion venom could be a useful treatment for a variety of diseases, such as cancer, epilepsy and analgesia. BmKTX is a polypeptide extracts from scorpion venom (PESV), which have attracted much attention from researchers in recent years. mBmKTX is a mutant polypeptide according to the amino acid sequence of BmKTX. We expressed it with the vector...

FIGURE 1S: Effect of tanshinone IIA on cell viability and proliferation in SH-SY5Y cells under glutamate intoxication. (a) Trypan Blue exclusion rate of the SH-SY5Y cells pretreated with tanshinone IIA at the indicated concentrations for 24 h and then exposed to 10 mM glutamate for another 24 h. (b) BrdU incorporation rate of the SH-SY5Y cells trea...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Dictyophora indusiata is a medicinal mushroom traditionally used in China for a variety of conditions, including inflammatory and neural diseases. D. indusiata polysaccharides (DiPS) are shown to have in vitro antioxidant activity but in vivo evidence is lacking. This study aimes to explore the antioxidant capacity...

The scorpion has been extensively used in various pharmacological profiles or as food supplies. The exploration of scorpion venom has been reported due to the presence of recombinant peptides. rBmαTX14 is an α-neurotoxin extracted from the venom gland of the East Asian scorpion Buthus martensii Karsch and can affect ion channel conductance. Here, w...

i>Epimedium has been traditionally used to treat a variety of medical conditions including neurological disorders. Here an acidic polysaccharide EbPS-A1 is isolated from Epimedium brevicornum and found to contain mainly galacturonic acid, galactose and rhamnose but also arabinose and glucuronic acid. Using Caenorhabditis elegans models, we show tha...

Tsai Tai is one of the most widely consumed Brassica vegetables in Asian countries because of its good taste and its nutritional benefits. This study evaluated the antioxidant capacity and possible associated health benefits of 3 Tsai Tai (Brassica chinensis) varieties, namely, Hon Tsai Tai, Pak Choi and Choi Sum. The DPPH radical scavenging abilit...

Doxorubicin (DOX) is known to induce apoptosis and necrosis in healthy tissue resulting in unwanted toxicities. To improve the ability of DOX to more specifically target tumors and minimize undesirable side effects, conjugation of DOX with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)–binding peptide (DOX-EBP) has been developed to deliver DOX to EGFR-ov...

Since excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) is known to be associated with aging and age-related diseases, strategies modulating ROS level and antioxidant defense systems may contribute to the delay of senescence. Here we show that the protein hydrolyzate from Angelica sinensis was capable of increasing oxidative survival of the model animal Caen...

Astragalus membranaceus is a medicinal plant traditionally used in China for a variety of conditions, including inflammatory and neural diseases. Astragalus polysaccharides are shown to reduce the adverse effect of levodopa which is used to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the neuroprotective effect of Astragalus polysaccharides per se in P...

TEF3-1 (Transcription Enhancer Factor 3 isoform 1) is a human transcriptional factor, which has a N-terminal TEA/ATTS domain supposedly for DNA binding and C-terminal PRD and STY domains for transcriptional activation. Taking advantage of the efficient reporter design of yeast two-hybrid system, we characterized the TEF3-1 domains in activating gen...

Main conclusion Two high-throughput tools harvest hundreds of novel cyclotides and analogues in plants. Cyclotides are gene-encoded backbone-cyclized polypeptides displaying a diverse range of bioactivities associated with plant defense. However, genome-scale or database-scale evaluations of cyclotides have been rare so far. Here, a novel time-ef...

Tetrandrine, a bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloid, is known to inhibit tumor cell proliferation and induce apoptosis in cancer models in vitro and in vivo. In the present study, tetrandrine significantly inhibited the proliferation of mouse endothelial cells (EOMA cell) and induced G1/S arrest in EOMA cells, in which the expressions of cyclin D and cyc...

Moderate consumption of red wine reduces the risk of heart disease and extends lifespan, which these healthy benefits are often attributed to its high antioxidant content. The relative contributions of wine polyphenols in healthy benefits were studied in this study. Among all wine polyphenols, caffeic acid was the richest one, while gallic acid sho...

Polyglutamine (polyQ) aggregation plays a pivotal role in the pathological process of Huntington's disease and other polyQ disorders. Therefore, strategies aiming at restoring dysfunction and reducing stresses mediated by polyQ toxicity are of therapeutic interest for proteotoxicity diseases. Salidroside, a glycoside from Rhodiola rosea, has been s...

Angelica sinensis has antioxidative and neuroprotective effects. In the present study, we aimed to determine the neuroprotective effect of polysaccharides isolated from Angelica sinensis. In a preliminary experiment, Angelica sinensis polysaccharides not only protected PC12 neuronal cells from H2O2-induced cytotoxicity, but also reduced apoptosis a...

Terpene synthases (TPSs) are responsible for the synthesis of the various terpene molecules which play important roles in the accumulation of secondary metabolites. However, systematic analysis of Artemisia annua TPS family has not been carried out, and little is known about the differences of transcript levels for TPS genes in A. annua (AaTPSs) an...

Ultrafiltration, ion-exchange chromatography and gel filtration chromatography were used to purify antioxidant peptides from hydrolysates of soybean protein isolates. The <1 kDa peptides were found to exhibit much higher antioxidant activity as compared to larger ones. Also, the alkaline peptide fractions were shown to have stronger antioxidant cap...

Aging is a progressive process with degenerative changes of various tissues and organs. As a classic model organism in genetics and neurobiology, Caenorhabditis elegans is also a powerful system in aging and behavioral studies and can be used at both molecular and organismal levels to evaluate potential therapeutics for age-related neurodegeneratio...

Recent studies have uncovered important aging clues, including free radicals, inflammation, telomere and lifespan pathways. Strategies to regulate aging-associated signaling pathways are expected to be effective in the delay and prevention of age-related disorders. For example, herbal polysaccharides with considerable antioxidant and anti-inflammat...

Anti-aging Chinese medicines have been used in traditional beverages to promote health and prevent diseases. Interestingly, these functional beverages may be used differently between men and women, reflecting the "Yin-Yang" philosophy of Chinese medicine. Modern studies have revealed some dietary natural products can slow aging in model organisms,...

Abstract Reproduction and locomotion are essential features of animals that help to facilitate their interaction with the surrounding environment. Previous studies have produced inconsistent results on behavioral response to spaceflight by the model animal Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) in liquid culture. Using standard agar-based nematode gro...

Induction of multidrug resistance by doxorubicin (DOX), together with non-specific toxicities, has restricted DOX-based chemotherapy. Recently, we demonstrated that DOX conjugated with an EGF receptor-binding peptide (DOX-EBP) had enhanced anticancer efficacy and reduced systemic toxicity when targeting EGF receptor-overexpressing tumours. Here we...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Chaenomeles speciosa fruits have been widely used in traditional Chinese medicine for treatment of diseases related to inflammatory reaction. This study aims to identify anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory components of Chaenomeles speciosa fruit and unravel their potential mechanisms. Materials and methods: Et...

Tetrandrine, a bisbenzylisoquinoline alkaloid isolated from the broadly used Chinese medicinal herb Stephaniae tetrandrae, exhibits potent antitumor effects and has the potential to be used as a cancer chemotherapeutic agent. We previously reported that high concentrations of tetrandrine induce apoptosis in liver cancer cells. Here, we found that i...

This study was aimed to evaluate the neuroprotective and anti-aging activity of extracts in Caenorhabditis elegans from the roots and leaves of Damnacanthus officinarum Huang to provide the pharmacological basis in traditional medicine. Investigations on the neuroprotective and lifespan activity were carried out, which were observed by utilizing th...

Aβ (amyloid β-peptide) has a central role in AD (Alzheimer's disease) where neuronal toxicity is linked to its extracellular and intracellular accumulation as oligomeric species. Searching for molecules that attenuate Aβ aggregation could uncover novel therapies for AD, but most studies in mammalian cells have inferred aggregation indirectly by ass...

Late-onset neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by progressive accumulation of aggregation-prone proteins and global disruption of the proteostasis network, e.g. abnormal polyQ (polyglutamine) aggregation in Huntington's disease. Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide (astragalan) has recently been shown to modulate aging and proteotoxic st...

The commercial production of microalgae has become increasingly popular, but only algal biomass has been widely used whereas the vast amount of algae-free media has been essentially unexploited. How- ever, a wide range of microalgae is known to release large amounts of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) into their media. Therefore, we have at...

Group 1 late embryogenesis-abundant (LEA1) proteins protect enzyme activity from dehydration and are structurally conserved with three different 20 amino acid motifs in the N-terminal, middle and C-terminal domains. Three soybean Em (LEA1) domain peptides (Em-N, Em-2M and Em-C) covering these respective motifs were constructed and had differential...

After the appalling "Wuxi Drinking Water Crisis", increasing investigations concerning the contaminations of cyanobacterial blooms and their toxins in Lake Taihu have been performed and reported in the last two years. However, information regarding these issues before the crisis in 2007 remained insufficient. To provide some background data for fur...

The main supporting matrix of the edible Nostoc commune colony is polysaccharide, which plays important roles in protecting the cyanobacterium itself from extreme desiccation and high radiation. To explore biomedical potential from the inherent nature of the polysaccharide, we investigated antioxidant and moisture-retention capacities of the polyme...

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is overexpressed in a variety of epithelial malignancies and thus can be used for EGFR-targeted therapy to improve antitumor efficacy. Therefore we synthesized a novel conjugate of doxorubicin (DOX) with an EGFR-binding peptide (NH₂-CMYIEALDKYAC-COOH; EBP) via an ester bond at position 14 of DOX through a glu...

Anhydrobiosis ("life without water") is the state of suspended animation that certain organisms, including some nematodes, tardigrades, and bdelloid rotifers, enter during desiccation. Extreme water loss imposes considerable stress on biomolecules, cells, and tissues, and must require specific sensing and response mechanisms for survival. However,...

Cyanobacteria are capable of tolerating environmental extremes. To survive in extreme environments, cyanobacteria have developed the capability to adapt to a variety of stresses. For example, cyanobacteria have adopted a number of strategies with which to survive UV stress, including expression of UV-screening pigments and antioxidant systems. We h...

Some species of the genera Anabaena can produce various kinds of cyanotoxins, which may pose risks to environment and human health. Anabaena has frequently been observed in eutrophic freshwater of China in recent years, but its toxicity has been reported only in a few studies. In the present study, the toxicity of an Anabaena flos-aquae strain isol...

Trehalose, a disaccharide present in many non-mammalian species, protects cells against various environmental stresses. Whereas some of the protective effects may be explained by its chemical chaperone properties, its actions are largely unknown. Here we report a novel function of trehalose as an mTOR-independent autophagy activator. Trehalose-indu...

Dehydration through evaporation, or air drying, is expected to have both similarities and differences to osmostress. Both stresses involve water loss, but the degree of dehydration will ultimately be more severe during desiccation. Despite the severity of desiccation stress, there are examples of organisms that can survive almost complete water los...

Some organisms adapt to persistent and severe stress by reversibly adjusting life-death balance to a new equilibrium, e.g., anhydrobiosis ("life without water") enables survival in a quiescent state on extreme desiccation. Aging is characterized by declining response and increasing vulnerability to stress, and the balance slowly, and irreversibly,...

One strategy for investigating desiccation tolerance is to use mammalian cells, which are sensitive to desiccation, as a model for testing putative adaptive mechanisms. However, how mammalian cells themselves respond to desiccation is poorly characterised. Although MAPK signal transduction pathways are activated by desiccation of human cells, hyper...

The importance of heparan sulfate proteoglycans has been highlighted by a number of human genetic disorders associated with mutations in genes encoding for heparan sulfate proteoglycan protein cores or biosynthetic enzymes required for heparan sulfate (HS) assembly. To study the functional role of HS in Caenorhabditis elegans development cosmid seq...

Increasing interest in anhydrobiosis ('life without water') has prompted the use of mammalian cells as a model in which candidate adaptations suspected of conferring desiccation tolerance can be tested. Despite this, there is no information on whether mammalian cells are able to sense and respond to desiccation. We have therefore examined the effec...

Substantial amounts of algal crusts were collected from five different desert experimental sites aged 42, 34, 17, 8 and 4 years, respectively, at Shapotou (China) and analyzed at a 0.1 mm microscale of depth. It was found that the vertical distribution of cyanobacteria and microalgae in the crusts was distinctly laminated into an inorganic-layer (c...

Heparan sulphate (HS) acts as a multifunctional cell regulator, with specific sulphated saccharide sequences designed for selective interactions with many proteins. Functionally, these interactions result in regulation of the protein activities, and there is growing evidence that cells can dynamically alter the structure of HS sequences that they d...

34-, 17-, 4-, 1.5-year old natural algal crusts were collected from Shapotou Scientific Station of the Chi- nese Academy of Sciences, 40-day old field and greenhouse artificial algal crusts were in situ developed in the same sandy soil and the same place (37°27hN, 104°57hE). Their different cohesions both against wind force and pressure were measur...

The cyanobacterium Nostoc commune Vaucher produces quite complex extracellular polysaccharides. The cyanobacterium is nitrogen fixing, and on growing the cyanobacterium in media with and without nitrogen, different types of extracellular polysaccharides were obtained. These were also different from the polysaccharides present in N. commune collecte...

Gel electrophoresis of fluorophore labeled saccharides provides a rapid and reliable method to screen enzymatic and/or chemical treatments of polysaccharides and glycoconjugates, as well as a sensitive and efficient microscale method to separate and purify oligosaccharides for further analysis. A simple and inexpensive method of derivatiza- tion an...

Twenty-two species of algae, including 10 Cyanophyta, 4 Chlorophyta, 6 Bacillariophyta and 2 Euglenophyta, were isolated and identified from the semi-desert algal crusts in Shapotou, Ningxia Autonomous Region. The relationship between algae and soil matrix was studied by grinding and superprobe, and the distribution of algal species in eight layers...

The structure of the viscous extracellular polysaccharide (glycan) of desiccation-tolerant Nostoc commune DRH-1 was determined through chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. The polysaccharide is novel in that it possesses a 1-4-linked xylogalactoglucan backbone with d-ribofuranose and 3-O-[(R)-1-carboxyethyl]-d-glucuronic acid (nosturonic acid...