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Hop acids are known for their potent antimicrobial properties and may offer significant benefits in aquaculture. As hop acids are a prominent component of spent brewer's yeast, a major byproduct of the brewing industry, their utilization in fish feed holds potential for enhancing both the economic and environmental sustainability of aquaculture operations, provided they are not detrimental to the growth and quality of the product. A 56‐day nutritional trial was conducted that incorporated hop acids (Humulone and Lupulone) into the diets of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus, and assessed their effects on rearing production, lysozyme activity, and final fillet LAB color & aroma. Four experimental diets containing between 0 and 1200 mg hop acids/kg feed were formulated for the nutritional study. Ninety‐six tilapias were distributed equally among twelve ~2000 L tanks (eight fish/tank) and randomly assigned a treatment diet with 3 tanks per treatment (n = 3). Fish were weighed weekly and fed daily. After the trial, various production metrics, including weight gain, feed conversion ratio, viscerosomatic index, hepatosomatic index, condition factor, and fillet yield, were assessed. Additionally, lysozyme activity was assessed in isolated serum samples. Skinned and deboned fillets were assessed for LAB color, and a sensory panel evaluated the aroma of raw and baked fillets. The study revealed the inclusion of hop acids provided no significant differences in the production metrics, except for the viscerosomatic index. While not reflected in the FCR, weekly weight measurement found that the feed treatment of approximately 300 hop acids/kg of feed had slightly higher average fish weight per tank toward the end of the feed trial. There were minor differences in color, but no significant differences in aroma between treatment and control fillets. Incorporating hop acids into the diet, even at the highest inclusion level tested, did not result in any adverse effects on the fish. While these findings do not show significant benefits of hop acid addition, there were no detrimental effects, suggesting a promising avenue for utilizing brewing waste streams or isolated hop acids as an effective supplement in fish feed formulations.

While yeasts are often incorporated into aquafeed, research examining the impact of Spent brewer's yeast (SBY) often lacks consideration of associated hop acid constituents. Hop acids are important components of SBY, which differentiate it from other yeast derivatives and often limit their application due to bitter taste. The present study examined the relationship between SBY and its associated hop acid when incorporated into an aquafeed. The effect of SBY on the growth, lysozyme activity, colour and nutritional composition of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) over a 10‐week nutritional trial was assessed. Four treatment feeds were formulated: a control feed (CTRL) with no SBY or hop acids, a feed with 300 mg hop acids/kg (HA), a 12% SBY‐supplemented feed (SBY) and a 12% SBY‐supplemented feed with 300 mg hop acids/kg (SBY+HA). One hundred and forty‐four fish were distributed into 12 tanks, with each tank randomly assigned one of the treatment diets. Key metrics such as weight gain, specific growth rate, feed conversion ratio, viscerosomatic index, hepatosomatic index, conditioning factor and fillet yield were assessed. Additionally, deboned fillets were evaluated for lightness, a and b(LAB) colour and proximate composition. The SBY‐supplemented feed without hop acids (SBY) resulted in lower growth, compared to the control (CTRL). However, the HA feed showed improved growth, compared to the control. Small differences were noted in fillet colour, but no significant differences were found in proximate composition across treatments. This study suggests that SBY, enriched with hop acids, could be a valuable protein supplement in aquafeed, providing production benefits without affecting final fillet quality. This study evaluated the inclusion of spent brewer's yeast (SBY) and hop acids in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) diets over a seventy‐day trial. While hop acids improved growth metrics in basal diets, SBY supplementation reduced growth, likely due to antinutritional effects. Despite these findings, SBY demonstrated potential as a sustainable protein source, offering environmental and economic benefits for aquafeed formulations with further optimization

Viscoelastic wormlike micelles are widely used in variety of industrial processes, and daily life applications such as food, paint, pharmacy, oil-field operations and others. Wormlike micelles usually contain surfactant and salts that are dissolved in water at high concentrations. These systems share many similarities with viscoelastic polymer solutions and follow similar scaling laws. However, unlike polymers, micellar chains have the ability to break and reform and for this reason they are also known as living polymers. Many of the above industrial applications, involve continuous shearing and extensional flows of wormlike micelles. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of micellar dynamics in shear and extensional flows is necessary for optimal design of such processes. Dynamics of viscoelastic wormlike micelles have been extensively studied under shear deformations. However much less is known about the behavior of these systems in predominantly extensional flows. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of micellar dynamics and morphological transitions in extensional flows is needed. In this project, we studied the nonlinear dynamics of a model wormlike micellar solutions using capillary breakup extensional rheometer (CaBER), shear rheology and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Wormlike micellar solutions contain cetyltrimethylammonium tosylate (CTAT) in deionized water over a wide range of surfactant concentrations. Steady shear experiments indicate that the shear relaxation time and the zero-shear rate viscosity increase as a function of surfactant concentration up to a critical threshold, beyond which shear relaxation time drops to smaller values, but zero shear viscosity approaches an asymptotic value. TEM images indicate that as surfactant concentration increases, the micellar length increases and beyond the critical concentration micelles become entangled and shorter in size. Our results indicate that at low surfactant concentrations, where micellar solutions exhibit shear thickening, extensional flows lead to extreme elongational thickening possibly due to elongation induced structure (EIS) formation. Within this range of concentration, the extensional relaxation time is fairly constant and as the surfactant concentration increases, the extensional relaxation time increases. More importantly, we have estimated the dimensionless Trouton ratio in extensional flows over a wide range of surfactant concentrations. Trouton ratio is defined as the ratio of transient extensional viscosity over the zero-shear viscosity of the fluid. Our results show that Trouton ratio increases as a function of time in the course of filament thinning dynamics until it asymptotes to a constant value. It turns out that the maximum Trouton ratio decreases as surfactant concentration increases and finally reaches a constant value around Tr ≈ 3 for concentration above the critical concentration. This clearly shows that uniaxial extensional flows and in particular, CaBER is sensitivity to microstructural changes in wormlike micelles.

During transformation, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are characterized by reducing apoptosis of bone marrow (BM) precursors. Mouse models of high risk (HR)-MDS and acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) post-MDS using mutant NRAS and overexpression of human BCL-2, known to be poor prognostic indicators of the human diseases, were created. We have reported the efficacy of the BCL-2 inhibitor, ABT-737, on the AML post-MDS model; here, we report that this BCL-2 inhibitor also significantly extended survival of the HR-MDS mouse model, with reductions of BM blasts and lineage negative/Sca1+/KIT+ (LSK) cells. Secondary transplants showed increased survival in treated compared to untreated mice. Unlike the AML model, BCL-2 expression and RAS activity decreased following treatment and the RAS:BCL-2 complex remained in the plasma membrane. Exon-specific gene expression profiling (GEP) of HR-MDS mice showed 1952 differentially regulated genes upon treatment, including genes important for the regulation of stem cells, differentiation, proliferation, oxidative phosphorylation, mitochondrial function, and apoptosis; relevant in human disease. Spliceosome genes, found to be abnormal in MDS patients and downregulated in our HR-MDS model, such as Rsrc1 and Wbp4, were upregulated by the treatment, as were genes involved in epigenetic regulation, such as DNMT3A and B, upregulated upon disease progression and downregulated upon treatment.

Background In spite of the recent discovery of genetic mutations in most myelodysplasic (MDS) patients, the pathophysiology of these disorders still remains poorly understood, and only few in vivo models are available to help unravel the disease. Methods We performed global specific gene expression profiling and functional pathway analysis in purified Sca1+ cells of two MDS transgenic mouse models that mimic human high-risk MDS (HR-MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) post MDS, with NRASD12 and BCL2 transgenes under the control of different promoters MRP8 NRASD12/ tet hBCL-2 or MRP8 [NRASD12/hBCL-2], respectively. Results Analysis of dysregulated genes that were unique to the diseased HR-MDS and AML post MDS mice and not their founder mice pointed first to pathways that had previously been reported in MDS patients, including DNA replication/damage/repair, cell cycle, apoptosis, immune responses, and canonical Wnt pathways, further validating these models at the gene expression level. Interestingly, pathways not previously reported in MDS were discovered. These included dysregulated genes of noncanonical Wnt pathways and energy and lipid metabolisms. These dysregulated genes were not only confirmed in a different independent set of BM and spleen Sca1+ cells from the MDS mice but also in MDS CD34+ BM patient samples. Conclusions These two MDS models may thus provide useful preclinical models to target pathways previously identified in MDS patients and to unravel novel pathways highlighted by this study.