1.Research on The Role of Dopamine in Regulating Sleep and Wakefulness Through Exercise
Li-Juan HOU ; Ya-Xuan GENG ; Ke LI ; Zhao-Yang HUANG ; Lan-Qun MAO
Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics 2025;52(1):88-98
Sleep is an instinctive behavior alternating awakening state, sleep entails many active processes occurring at the cellular, circuit and organismal levels. The function of sleep is to restore cellular energy, enhance immunity, promote growth and development, consolidate learning and memory to ensure normal life activities. However, with the increasing of social pressure involved in work and life, the incidence of sleep disorders (SD) is increasing year by year. In the short term, sleep disorders lead to impaired memory and attention; in the longer term, it produces neurological dysfunction or even death. There are many ways to directly or indirectly contribute to sleep disorder and keep the hormones, including pharmacological alternative treatments, light therapy and stimulus control therapy. Exercise is also an effective and healthy therapeutic strategy for improving sleep. The intensities, time periods, and different types of exercise have different health benefits for sleep, which can be found through indicators such as sleep quality, sleep efficiency and total sleep time. So it is more and more important to analyze the mechanism and find effective regulation targets during sleep disorder through exercise. Dopamine (DA) is an important neurotransmitter in the nervous system, which not only participates in action initiation, movement regulation and emotion regulation, but also plays a key role in the steady-state remodeling of sleep-awakening state transition. Appreciable evidence shows that sleep disorder on humans and rodents evokes anomalies in the dopaminergic signaling, which are also implicated in the development of psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia or substance abuse. Experiments have shown that DA in different neural pathways plays different regulatory roles in sleep behavior, we found that increasing evidence from rodent studies revealed a role for ventral tegmental area DA neurons in regulating sleep-wake patterns. DA signal transduction and neurotransmitter release patterns have complex interactions with behavioral regulation. In addition, experiments have shown that exercise causes changes in DA homeostasis in the brain, which may regulate sleep through different mechanisms, including cAMP response element binding protein signal transduction, changes in the circadian rhythm of biological clock genes, and interactions with endogenous substances such as adenosine, which affect neuronal structure and play a neuroprotective role. This review aims to introduce the regulatory effects of exercise on sleep disorder, especially the regulatory mechanism of DA in this process. The analysis of intracerebral DA signals also requires support from neurophysiological and chemical techniques. Our laboratory has established and developed an in vivo brain neurochemical analysis platform, which provides support for future research on the regulation of sleep-wake cycles by movement. We hope it can provide theoretical reference for the formulation of exercise prescription for clinical sleep disorder and give some advice to the combined intervention of drugs and exercise.
2.UPLC-Q-TOF-MS combined with network pharmacology reveals effect and mechanism of Gentianella turkestanorum total extract in ameliorating non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
Wu DAI ; Dong-Xuan ZHENG ; Ruo-Yu GENG ; Li-Mei WEN ; Bo-Wei JU ; Qiang HOU ; Ya-Li GUO ; Xiang GAO ; Jun-Ping HU ; Jian-Hua YANG
China Journal of Chinese Materia Medica 2025;50(7):1938-1948
This study aims to reveal the effect and mechanism of Gentianella turkestanorum total extract(GTI) in ameliorating non-alcoholic steatohepatitis(NASH). UPLC-Q-TOF-MS was employed to identify the chemical components in GTI. SwissTarget-Prediction, GeneCards, OMIM, and TTD were utilized to screen the targets of GTI components and NASH. The common targets shared by GTI components and NASH were filtered through the STRING database and Cytoscape 3.9.0 to identify core targets, followed by GO and KEGG enrichment analysis. AutoDock was used for molecular docking of key components with core targets. A mouse model of NASH was established with a methionine-choline-deficient high-fat diet. A 4-week drug intervention was conducted, during which mouse weight was monitored, and the liver-to-brain ratio was measured at the end. Hematoxylin-eosin staining, Sirius red staining, and oil red O staining were employed to observe the pathological changes in the liver tissue. The levels of various biomarkers, including aspartate aminotransferase(AST), alanine aminotransferase(ALT), hydroxyproline(HYP), total cholesterol(TC), triglycerides(TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol(LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol(HDL-C), malondialdehyde(MDA), superoxide dismutase(SOD), and glutathione(GSH), in the serum and liver tissue were determined. RT-qPCR was conducted to measure the mRNA levels of interleukin 1β(IL-1β), interleukin 6(IL-6), tumor necrosis factor α(TNF-α), collagen type I α1 chain(COL1A1), and α-smooth muscle actin(α-SMA). Western blotting was conducted to determine the protein levels of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and potential drug targets identified through network pharmacology. UPLC-Q-TOF/MS identified 581 chemical components of GTI, and 534 targets of GTI and 1 157 targets of NASH were screened out. The topological analysis of the common targets shared by GTI and NASH identified core targets such as IL-1β, IL-6, protein kinase B(AKT), TNF, and peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma(PPARG). GO and KEGG analyses indicated that the ameliorating effect of GTI on NASH was related to inflammatory responses and the phosphoinositide 3-kinase(PI3K)/AKT pathway. The staining results demonstrated that GTI ameliorated hepatocyte vacuolation, swelling, ballooning, and lipid accumulation in NASH mice. Compared with the model group, high doses of GTI reduced the AST, ALT, HYP, TC, and TG levels(P<0.01) while increasing the HDL-C, SOD, and GSH levels(P<0.01). RT-qPCR results showed that GTI down-regulated the mRNA levels of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, COL1A1, and α-SMA(P<0.01). Western blot results indicated that GTI down-regulated the protein levels of IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, phosphorylated PI3K(p-PI3K), phosphorylated AKT(p-AKT), phosphorylated inhibitor of nuclear factor kappa B alpha(p-IκBα), and nuclear factor kappa B(NF-κB)(P<0.01). In summary, GTI ameliorates inflammation, dyslipidemia, and oxidative stress associated with NASH by regulating the PI3K/AKT/NF-κB signaling pathway.
Animals
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Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease/genetics*
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Mice
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Network Pharmacology
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Male
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Drugs, Chinese Herbal/administration & dosage*
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Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid
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Liver/metabolism*
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Mice, Inbred C57BL
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Humans
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Mass Spectrometry
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Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha/metabolism*
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Disease Models, Animal
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Molecular Docking Simulation

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