OBJECTIVETo study the anti-tumor and immunity activity of toad coat (Chantui), which is a new officinal part of Bufo bufo gargarizans.

METHODThe tumor weight of S180, H22, Lewis lung cancer cell inoculated in mice were compared between the groups of mice, fed with toad coat, and those which were not (control group). The average longevity of the mice with HCA fed with toad coat was also compared with the control group. The T lymphocyte transformation and NK cell killing activity were tested and compared with the control group. The condition of the mice which were fed with great dosage of Chantui (16 g x kg(-1) x d(-1)) was observed.

RESULTThe tumor weight was remarkably reduced in the groups which were fed with toad coat compared with the control group. Tests show that toad coat can raise the activity of both T lymphocyte and NK cell. There was no obvious side-effect when the mice were fed with great dosage of toad coat.

CONCLUSIONThe results show that toad coat has a strong inhibitory activity against tumors inoculated in mice and a strong enhancement of immune activity, so it could be viewed as a new valuable safe medicinal source.

Animals ; Antineoplastic Agents ; administration & dosage ; Bufo bufo ; Cell Line, Tumor ; Female ; Killer Cells, Natural ; immunology ; Male ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Neoplasms ; drug therapy ; immunology ; pathology ; Random Allocation ; Skin ; chemistry ; T-Lymphocytes ; immunology ; Tumor Burden ; drug effects

Identification of genetic variants via high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies has been essential for both fundamental and clinical studies. However, to what extent the genome sequence composition affects variant calling remains unclear. In this study, we identified 63,897 multi-copy sequences (MCSs) with a minimum length of 300 bp, each of which occurs at least twice in the human genome. The 151,749 genomic loci (multi-copy regions, or MCRs) harboring these MCSs account for 1.98％of the genome and are distributed unevenly across chromosomes. MCRs containing the same MCS tend to be located on the same chromosome. Gene Ontology (GO) anal-yses revealed that 3800 genes whose UTRs or exons overlap with MCRs are enriched for Golgi-related cellular component terms and various enzymatic activities in the GO biological function cat-egory. MCRs are also enriched for loci that are sensitive to neocarzinostatin-induced double-strand breaks. Moreover, genetic variants discovered by genome-wide association studies and recorded indbSNP are significantly underrepresented in MCRs. Using simulated HTS datasets, we show that false variant discovery rates are significantly higher in MCRs than in other genomic regions. These results suggest that extra caution must be taken when identifying genetic variants in the MCRs via HTS technologies.