Present study aimed to determine the effect of ‘bitter melon’, a popularly used fruit in Bangladesh and several other Asian countries, on high-fat-diet-induced type 2 diabetes. To investigate the effect, ethanol extract from bitter melon (BME) as a dietary supplement with mouse chow was used. BME was found to significantly attenuate the high-fat diet (HFD) -induced body weight and total fat mass. BME also effectively reduced the insulin resistance induced by the HFD. Furthermore, dietary supplementation of BME was highly effective in increasing insulin sensitivity and reducing hepatic fat and obesity. These results indicate that BME could be effective in attenuating type 2 diabetes and could therefore be a preventive measure against type 2 diabetes.

Livestock wastewater has high potential as one of energy resources because this wastewater is including high organic matter. Therefore the studies attempting to bio-gasification and bio-electricity generation using livestock wastewater is being tried. The pre-treatment system used in this study was the purpose to control the ammonia nitrogen in conjunction with the system and the microbial fuel cell. Because ammonia nitrogen is to inhibit the electricity generation efficiency of microbial fuel cell. These studies were to ascertain the effect of oxidants on the nitrogen removal in the pre-treatment system using catalyst and microbubbles to treat the ammonia nitrogen. The three kinds of oxidant such as air, oxygen (O2), and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) were used to know the ammonia and nitrate nitrogen removal. This system was operated with four kinds of conditions. First method is O2 gas with 100 mL/min with 1ml of 30% H2O2 was supplied to the wastewater. A second method, the O2, with 400 and 1,000 mL/min was supplied through the flow meter before livestock wastewater was flow in the reactor. The last method, air was supplied 800 mL/min. The nitrate removal had no significant difference all conditions except the air supply. On the other hand, the ammonia and nitrate nitrogen removal when oxygen was supplied with 1000 mL O2/min was higher than that of the other conditions. The removal rate when air was supplied 800 mL/min was similar to the value in the supplied with 400 ml O2/min. This result showed that oxidant was important factor to improve the ammonia nitrogen removal rate.

Transforming growth factor (TGF) family is well known to induce the chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). However, the precise signal transduction pathways and underlying factors are not well known. Thus the present study aims to evaluate the possible role of C2 domain in the chondrogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells. To this end, 145 C2 domains in the adenovirus were individually transfected to hMSC, and morphological changes were examined. Among 145 C2 domains, C2 domain of protein kinase C eta (PKCη) was selected as a possible chondrogenic differentiation factor for hMSC. To confirm this possibility, we treated TGFβ3, a well known chondrogenic differentiation factor of hMSC, and examined the increased-expression of glycosaminoglycan (GAG), collagen type II (COL II) as well as PKCη using PT-PCR, immunocytochemistry and Western blot analysis. To further evaluation of C2 domain of PKCη, we examined morphological changes, expressions of GAG and COL II after transfection of PKCη -C2 domain in hMSC. Overexpression of PKCη-C2 domain induced morphological change and increased GAG and COL II expressions. The present results demonstrate that PKCη involves in the TGF-β3-induced chondrogenic differentiation of hMSC, and C2 domain of PKCη has important role in this process.