Fibroblasts of large animals are easy to isolate and to maintain in vitro culture. Thus, these cells are extensively applied to donor cell for somatic cell nuclear transfer, and to substrate cells to generate induced pluripotent stem cells after transfection of required genes to be essentially required for direct reprogramming. However, limited mitotic activity of fibroblasts to differentiate along a terminal lineage becomes restrictive for their versatile application. Recently, commercial culture medium and systems developed for primary cells are provided by manufactures. In this study, we examined whether one of the systems developed for primary fibroblasts of human are effective on porcine ear skin fibroblasts. To this end, we performed proliferation assay after five days culture in vitro of porcine fibroblasts in medium DMEM, which is generally used for fibroblasts culture, and medium M106 for human dermal fibroblasts, supplemented with various concentrations of FBS and LSGS contained mainly growth factors, respectively. Consequence was that presence of 15% FBS and 0.1 X concentrations of LSGS in DMEM showed most active proliferation of porcine fibroblasts.

To find an alternative for synthetic pesticides, methanol extract from plant samples were tested for their insecticidal activity against insect. The extract of Asiasarum sieboldii had strongly insecticidal activity against Plutella xylostella. Roots of A. sieboldii were extracted with methanol, and the concentrated extract was partitioned with n-hexane, ethylacetate, n-buthanol and H2O. The highest activity was shown in the hexane fraction. Activity-guided fractionation led to the isolation of two amides from hexane fration through the repeated silica gel column chromatographic separations. From the interpretation of spectropic data including NMR, MS, IR, the chemical structures of compounds were determined as dodeca-2E,4E,8Z,10Z-tetraenoic acid isobutylamide and dodeca-2E,4E,8Z, 10E-tetraenoic acid isobutylamide. These compounds showed insecticidal activity on P. xylostella by 96.7% at 100ppm. The liquid formulation controlled on cabbage effectively. The extract and compounds from A. sieboldii showed insecticidal activity against Nilaparvata lugens. As a naturally occurring pesticide, A. sieboldii could be useful as a new botanic insecticide.

Neurotrophic factors are essential to maintain and organize neurons functionally; thereby neurotrophic factor-like substances or their inducers are expected to be applied to the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as stroke. In the present study, we firstly examined the effects of ethanol extracts of Hericium erinaceus (HE, Yamabushitake), on nerve growth factor expression in neuronal cells. HE extract promoted NGF expression in a brain tissue. Here we assessed neuroprotective effects of HE with a transient global cerebral ischemia model. Global cerebral ischemia was induced by occluding both common carotid arteries. Treatment with HE was initiated after ischemia induction and given once a day for 7 consecutive days. Neuronal cell loss in CA1 of hippocampus was significantly decreased and the performance in the Morris water maze was significantly improved in rats administered HE. We conclude that treatment with HE attenuated learning and memory deficits, motor functional disability, and neuronal cell loss induced by global cerebral ischemia. These results suggest that HE may be a potential candidate for the treatment of vascular dementia.

Selenoprotein S (SelS) is widely expressed in diverse tissues where it localizes in the plasma membrane and endoplasmic reticulum. We studied the potential function of SelS in erythrocyte differentiation using K562 cells stably over-expressing SelS wild-type (WT) or one of two SelS point mutants, U188S or U188C. We found that in the K562 cells treated with 1μM Ara-C, SelS gradually declined over five days of treatment. On day 4, intracellular ROS levels were higher in cells expressing SelS-WT than in those expressing a SelS mutant. Moreover, the cell cycle patterns in cells expressing SelS-WT or U188C were similar to the controls. The expression and activation of SIRT1 were also reduced during K562 differentiation. Cells expressing SelS-WT showed elevated SIRT1 expression and activation (phosphorylation), as well as higher levels of FoxO3a expression. SIRT1 activation was diminished slightly in cells expressing SelS-WT after treatment with the ROS scavenger NAC (12 mM), but not in those expressing a SelS mutant. After four days of Ara-C treatment, SelS-WT-expressing cells showed elevated transcription of β-globin, y-globin, ε-globin, GATA-1 and zfpm-1, whereas cells expressing a SelS mutant did not. These results suggest that the suppression of SelS acts as a trigger for proerythrocyte differentiation via the ROS-mediated downregulation of SIRT1.