The recent applications of chitosan and its derivatives in enzyme immobilization are reviewed in this paper. It is introduced that the immobilized enzyme on different kinds of chitosan and its derivitaves have been prepared by various immobilization methods. Their applications are also discussed. The chitosan and its derivatives are admirable carriers for enzyme immobilization with many advantages, such as various and simple immobilized methods? good biocompatibility and abundant resources.

BACKGROUND:Hot-melt adhesive is safe and environmental friendly adhesive due to free of solvent, which is particularly suitable for medical applications. OBJECTIVE:To describe the types and characteristics of currently used hot-melt adhesives and to prospect the technical research and development of hot-melt adhesive for polyolefin tubes or catheters as wel as to point out the corresponding key points to the hot-melt adhesion. METHODS:Literature search was carried out in SCI, Elsevier, and CNKI with the key words of“hot melt adhesive, medical application”in English and Chinese, respectively, for the initial retrieval of relevant articles or patents published January 1995 to December 2015. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:To date, the medical hot-melt adhesives reported in the literature could be grouped as amorphous polyolefin, thermoplastic elastomer, acrylic and polyurethane types. The heat resistance of the most of the hot-melt adhesives does not meet the requirement for steam sterilizing process. In the present review, a strategy is proposed to develop a novel hot-melt adhesive which is good for binding polyolefin parts and can undergo the sterilization process. Given this, it is essential to choose a kind of polypropylene random copolymer with a suitable melting point as a substrate. With the aid of an adjuvant agent, therefore, we can develop a novel hot-melt adhesive that exhibits a lower melting point than the polyolefin tube, withstands steam sterilization temperature to ensure that the tube is not deformed during melt adhesion and is not become invalid during sterilization.

In this study cationic and heparinized polyurethanes (PUs) were synthesized by a two-step solution polymerized method. Cationic and heparinized PUs were investigated by infrared spectroscopy, electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA) and turbidity method. At the same time, the PUs proved of good biocompatibility through the laboratory tests, including blood coagulation time (CT), activated partial thromb plastin time (APTT) and fibroblast culture. These materials have good biocompatible function.
Blood Coagulation Tests ; Coated Materials, Biocompatible ; chemistry ; Heparin ; pharmacology ; Humans ; Materials Testing ; Partial Thromboplastin Time ; Polyurethanes ; chemical synthesis ; chemistry ; Surface Properties

The fungus Trichophyton schoenleinii (T. schoenleinii) is the causative agent of Trichophytosis and Tinea favosa of the scalp in certain regions of Eurasia and Africa. Human innate immune system plays an important role in combating with various pathogens including fungi. The inflammasome is one of the most critical arms of host innate immunity, which is a protein complex controlling maturation of IL-1β. To clarify whether T. schoenleinii is able to activate the inflammasome, we analyzed human monocytic cell line THP-1 for IL-1β production upon infection with T. schoenleinii strain isolated from Tinea favosa patients, and rapid IL-1β secretion from THP-1 cells was observed. Moreover, applying competitive inhibitors and gene specific silencing with shRNA, we found that T. schoenleinii induced IL-1β secretion, ASC pyroptosome formation as well as caspase-1 activation were all dependent on NLRP3. Cathepsin B activity, ROS production and K⁺ efflux were required for the inflammasome activation by T. schoenleinii. Our data thus reveal that the NLRP3 inflammasome plays an important role in host defense against T. schoenleinii, and suggest that manipulating NLRP3 signaling can be a novel approach for control of diseases caused by T. schoenleinii infection.
Animals ; Bone Marrow Cells ; cytology ; Carrier Proteins ; metabolism ; Caspase 1 ; metabolism ; Cell Line ; Dendritic Cells ; cytology ; metabolism ; microbiology ; Enzyme Activation ; Hot Temperature ; Humans ; Inflammasomes ; metabolism ; Interleukin-1beta ; biosynthesis ; metabolism ; Lysosomes ; metabolism ; Mice ; Monocytes ; cytology ; metabolism ; microbiology ; NLR Family, Pyrin Domain-Containing 3 Protein ; Potassium ; metabolism ; Reactive Oxygen Species ; metabolism ; Signal Transduction ; Trichophyton ; physiology

The identification of oleaginous yeast species capable of simultaneously utilizing xylose and glucose as substrates to generate value-added biological products is an area of key economic interest. We have previously demonstrated that the Cutaneotrichosporon dermatisNICC30027 yeast strain is capable of simultaneously assimilating both xylose and glucose, resulting in considerable lipid accumulation. However, as no high-quality genome sequencing data or associated annotations for this strain are available at present, it remains challenging to study the metabolic mechanisms underlying this phenotype. Herein, we report a 39,305,439 bp draft genome assembly for C. dermatis NICC30027 comprised of 37 scaffolds, with 60.15% GC content. Within this genome, we identified 524 tRNAs, 142 sRNAs, 53 miRNAs, 28 snRNAs, and eight rRNA clusters. Moreover, repeat sequences totaling 1,032,129 bp in length were identified (2.63% of the genome), as were 14,238 unigenes that were 1,789.35 bp in length on average (64.82% of the genome). The NCBI non-redundant protein sequences (NR) database was employed to successfully annotate 11,795 of these unigenes, while 3,621 and 11,902 were annotated with the Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL databases, respectively. Unigenes were additionally subjected to pathway enrichment analyses using the Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Cluster of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG), Clusters of orthologous groups for eukaryotic complete genomes (KOG), and Non-supervised Orthologous Groups (eggNOG) databases.Together, these results provide a foundation for future studies aimed at clarifying the mechanistic basis for the ability of C. dermatis NICC30027 to simultaneously utilize glucose and xylose to synthesize lipids.

Objective To assess the alterations of negative functional connectivity(FC),its relationship with clinical symptoms,and its potential value in schizophrenia(SZ).Methods Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging(rs-fMRI)data were acquired from patients with SZ and healthy controls(HC).For each participant,the whole brain image was first divided into 272 regions and then the FC between each pair of these regions was calculated using Pearson's correlation coefficient.Group-level negative FCs were identified using permutation test for each group.Each of the identified negative FCs was then compared between patients and controls to identify the altered negative FCs.Then,Spearman rank correlation was adopted to examine the relationship between the altered negative FCs and clinical variables.Finally,to evaluate the diagnostic value of negative FC in SZ,a multivariate pattern analysis(MVPA)was performed to distinguish between SZ and HC based on negative FCs.Results Ninety-one patients with SZ and 91 HC were included in this study,and 207 negative FCs in total were identified.Among the identified 207 negative FCs,12(constituting 5.80％of the total 207 negative FCs)were significantly altered in SZ compared with HC(Bonferroni correction,P<0.05),of which 11 were significantly decreased(i.e.,closer to 0)in SZ.The correlation analyses identified 2 significant associations-one was between a negative FC and the total score of the psychotic symptoms rating scales-auditory hallucinations(r=-0.24,P=0.02)and the other was between a negative FC and the weighted total score of the scale for the assessment of thought,language,and communication(r=0.26,P=0.01).Furthermore,the model for distinguishing between SZ and HC based on negative FCs achieved a classification accuracy of 72.6％that was significantly higher than chance-level accuracy(permutation test,P<0.001).Conclusion Negative FCs are altered in patients with SZ.Given that negative FCs are associated with clinical symptoms,thus they may serve as an imaging biomarker for assisting the diagnosis of SZ.