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This study investigated the mechanism of reducing body fat via whey protein diet. Pregnant mice were fed whey or casein, and their offspring were fed by birth mothers. After weaning at 4 weeks, male pups received the diets administered to their birth mothers (n = 6 per group). At 12 weeks of age, body weight, fat mass, fasting blood glucose (FBG), insulin (IRI), homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), cholesterol (Cho), triglyceride (TG), the expression levels of lipid metabolism-related genes in liver tissues and metabolomic data of fat tissues were measured and compared between the groups. The birth weights of pups born were similar in the two groups. Compared to the pups in the casein group, at 12 weeks of age, pups in the whey group weighed less, had significantly lower fat mass, HOMA-IR and TG levels (p < 0.01, p = 0.02, p = 0.01, respectively), and significantly higher levels of the antioxidant glutathione and the anti-inflammatory 1-methylnicotinamide in fat tissues (p < 0.01, p = 0.04, respectively). No differences were observed in FBG, IRI, Cho levels (p = 0.75, p = 0.07, p = 0.63, respectively) and expression levels of lipid metabolism-related genes. Whey protein has more antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties than casein protein, which may be its mechanism for reducing body fat.

Diabetes mellitus type II and obesity are two important causes of death in modern society. They are characterized by low-grade chronic inflammation and metabolic dysfunction (meta-inflammation), which is observed in all tissues involved in energy homeostasis. A substantial body of evidence has established an important role for macrophages in these tissues during the development of diabetes mellitus type II and obesity. Macrophages can activate into specialized subsets by cues from their microenvironment to handle a variety of tasks. Many different subsets have been described and in diabetes/obesity literature two main classifications are widely used that are also defined by differential metabolic reprogramming taking place to fuel their main functions. Classically activated, pro-inflammatory macrophages (often referred to as M1) favor glycolysis, produce lactate instead of metabolizing pyruvate to acetyl-CoA, and have a tricarboxylic acid cycle that is interrupted at two points. Alternatively activated macrophages (often referred to as M2) mainly use beta-oxidation of fatty acids and oxidative phosphorylation to create energy-rich molecules such as ATP and are involved in tissue repair and downregulation of inflammation. Since diabetes type II and obesity are characterized by metabolic alterations at the organism level, these alterations may also induce changes in macrophage metabolism resulting in unique macrophage activation patterns in diabetes and obesity. This review describes the interactions between metabolic reprogramming of macrophages and conditions of metabolic dysfunction like diabetes and obesity. We also focus on different possibilities of measuring a range of metabolites intra-and extracellularly in a precise and comprehensive manner to better identify the subsets of polarized macrophages that are unique to diabetes and obesity. Advantages and disadvantages of the currently most widely used metabolite analysis approaches are highlighted. We further describe how their combined use may serve to provide a comprehensive overview of the metabolic changes that take place intracellularly during macrophage activation in conditions like diabetes and obesity.

Biological homeostasis is a dynamic and elastic equilibrium of countless interlinked biochemical reactions. A key goal of life sciences is to understand these dynamics; bioengineers seek to reconfigure such networks. Both goals require the ability to monitor the concentration of individual intracellular metabolites with sufficient spatiotemporal resolution. To achieve this, a range of protein or protein/DNA signalling circuits with optical readouts have been constructed. Protein biosensors can provide quantitative information at subsecond temporal and suborganelle spatial resolution. However, their construction is fraught with difficulties related to integrating the affinity- and selectivity-endowing components with the signal reporters. We argue that development of efficient approaches for construction of chemically induced dimerisation systems and reporter domains with large dynamic ranges will solve these problems. Biosensors enable quantification of analytes of choice inside living cells.Protein biosensors can transform the way we monitor and engineer metabolism.The key challenges are to develop biosensors with large dynamic range and tuneable specificity.Ultimately, we seek to democratise this technology so that it is readily available to the scientific community.

Mentha species are well recognized for their medicinal and aromatic properties. The comprehensive metabolite profiles of nine Mentha species have been determined. The extracts of these Mentha species were also screened for antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities. Forty-seven hydrophilic and seventeen lipophilic compounds were identified and quantified from the selected Mentha species. Also, eleven phenolic compounds, riboflavin and eight carotenoids were present, and their composition and content varied among the various Mentha species. The different Mentha species exhibited a range of antioxidant potencies. Horse mint especially exhibited the strongest antioxidant capacities (1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH), hydrogen peroxide, and reducing power assay) among the nine Mentha species. A difference between different samples from the same species was not observed by multivariate analysis. A high correlation between metabolites involved in closely linked biosynthetic pathways has been indicated. The projection to latent structure method, using the partial least squares (PLS) method, was applied to predict antioxidant capacities based on the metabolite profiles of Mentha leaves. According to the PLS analysis, several carotenoid contents, such as E-β-carotene, 9Z-β-carotene, 13Z-β-carotene and lutein, as well as phenolic compounds, showed a positive relationship in reducing the power of Mentha extracts. Horse mint is a good candidate because of its high antioxidant efficacy among the nine Mentha species included in the study.

Vegetable crops possess a prominent nutri-metabolite pool that not only contributes to the crop performance in the fields, but also offers nutritional security for humans. In the pursuit of identifying, quantifying and functionally characterizing the cellular metabolome pool, biomolecule separation technologies, data acquisition platforms, chemical libraries, bioinformatics tools, databases and visualization techniques have come to play significant role. High-throughput metabolomics unravels structurally diverse nutrition-rich metabolites and their entangled interactions in vegetable plants. It has helped to link identified phytometabolites with unique phenotypic traits, nutri-functional characters, defense mechanisms and crop productivity. In this study, we explore mining diverse metabolites, localizing cellular metabolic pathways, classifying functional biomolecules and establishing linkages between metabolic fluxes and genomic regulations, using comprehensive metabolomics deciphers of the plant’s performance in the environment. We discuss exemplary reports covering the implications of metabolomics, addressing metabolic changes in vegetable plants during crop domestication, stage-dependent growth, fruit development, nutri-metabolic capabilities, climatic impacts, plant-microbe-pest interactions and anthropogenic activities. Efforts leading to identify biomarker metabolites, candidate proteins and the genes responsible for plant health, defense mechanisms and nutri-rich crop produce are documented. With the insights on metabolite-QTL (mQTL) driven genetic architecture, molecular breeding in vegetable crops can be revolutionized for developing better nutritional capabilities, improved tolerance against diseases/pests and enhanced climate resilience in plants.

Background Drought stress has a negative effect on both seed yield and seed quality in Brassica napus (oilseed rape, canola). Here we show that while drought impairs the maternal plant performance, it also increases the vigour of progeny of stressed maternal plants. We investigated the transgenerational influence of abiotic stress by detailed analysis of yield, seed quality, and seedling performance on a growth-related and metabolic level. Seeds of eight diverse winter oilseed rape genotypes were generated under well-watered and drought stress conditions under controlled-environment conditions in large plant containers. Results We found a decrease in seed quality in seeds derived from mother plants that were exposed to drought stress. At the same time, the seeds that developed under stress conditions showed higher seedling vigour compared to non-stressed controls.This effect on seed quality and seedling vigour was found to be independent of maternal plant yield performance. Conclusions Drought stress has a positive transgenerational effect on seedling vigour. Three potential causes for stress-induced improvement of seedling vigour are discussed: (1) Heterotic effects caused by a tendency towards a higher outcrossing rate in response to stress; (2) an altered reservoir of seed storage metabolites to which the seedling resorts during early growth, and (3) inter-generational stress memory, formed by stress-induced changes in the epigenome of the seedling.

Coix lachryma-jobi L. is an excellent plant resource that has a concomitant function for medicine, foodstuff and forage in China. At present, the commonly used cultivar for both medicine and foodstuff is Xiaobaike, and the cultivar for foraging is Daheishan. However, differences in the internal composition of plants lead to the expression of different phenotypic traits. In order to comprehensively elucidate the differences in nutrient composition changes in Coix seeds, a non-targeted metabolomics method based on ultra-performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) was used to analyze the metabolic changes in Coix seeds at different developmental stages. An edible Coix relative (Xiaobaike) and a feeding Coix relative (Daheishan) were selected as the research subjects. In the metabolome analysis of Coix seed, 314 metabolites were identified and detected, among which organic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleotides and flavonoids were the main components. As an important standard for evaluating the quality of Coix seed, seven lipids were detected, among which fatty acids included not only even-chain fatty acids, but also odd-chain fatty acids, which was the first time detecting a variety of odd-chain fatty acids in Coix seed. The analysis of the compound contents in edible and feeding-type Coix lachryma-jobi L. and the lipid content at the mature stage showed that, among them, arachidic acid, behenic acid, heptadecanoic acid, heneicosanoic acid and pristanic acid may be the key compounds affecting the lipid content. In addition, in the whole process of semen coicis maturation, edible and feeding Coix show similar trends, and changes in the third period show clear compounds in the opposite situation, suggesting that edible and feeding Coix not only guarantee the relative stability of species but also provide raw materials for genetic breeding. This study provides valuable information on the formation of the edible and medicinal qualities of Coix.

Global regulators that bind strategic metabolites allow bacteria to adapt rapidly to dynamic environments by coordinating the expression of many genes. We report an approach for determining gene regulation hierarchy using the regulon of the Bacillus subtilis global regulatory protein CodY as proof of principle. In theory, this approach can be used to measure the dynamics of any bacterial transcriptional regulatory network that is affected by interaction with a ligand. In B. subtilis , CodY controls dozens of genes, but the threshold activities of CodY required to regulate each gene are unknown. We hypothesized that targets of CodY are differentially regulated based on varying affinity for the protein’s many binding sites. We used RNA sequencing to determine the transcription profiles of B. subtilis strains expressing mutant CodY proteins with different levels of residual activity. In parallel, we quantified intracellular metabolites connected to central metabolism. Strains producing CodY variants F71Y, R61K, and R61H retained varying degrees of partial activity relative to the WT protein, leading to gene-specific, differential alterations in transcript abundance for the 223 identified members of the CodY regulon. Using liquid chromatography coupled to MS, we detected significant increases in branched-chain amino acids and intermediates of arginine, proline, and glutamate metabolism, as well as decreases in pyruvate and glycerate as CodY activity decreased. We conclude that a spectrum of CodY activities leads to programmed regulation of gene expression and an apparent rerouting of carbon and nitrogen metabolism, suggesting that during changes in nutrient availability, CodY prioritizes the expression of specific pathways.

Plant chloroplasts produce excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) during photosynthesis, particularly under biotic and abiotic stress conditions. These adverse environmental stresses lead to significant alterations in various cellular components, especially within the chloroplast, which serves as a key stress-sensor organelle. The stress response of chloroplasts can trigger plastid-to-nucleus retrograde signaling and enhance the biosynthesis of biologically active compounds and phytohormones, which are mechanisms that aid plants in acclimating to environmental stress. While ROS act as signaling molecules to help re-adjust cellular metabolic homeostasis, they also risk damaging chloroplasts’ structural and functional integrity. Recent research on stress-induced plant metabolism has provided new insights into the chloroplast’s stress response. In particular, advancements in mass spectrometry (MS) techniques have expanded our understanding of how oxidative stress affects plants through metabolomics analyses of metabolites involved in this process. Here, we emphasize the MS-based profiling of lipids, apocarotenoids, and phytohormones linked to ROS-triggered processes in plants. Moreover, we discuss the plants’ metabolic responses to abiotic stress. Finally, we outline future directions for chloroplast stress research. We advocate for integrating MS-based metabolomics with biochemical and molecular genetic approaches to discover new signaling molecules and identify interconnected signaling components that function across multiple chloroplast signaling pathways.

As one type of the most important alkaloids in the world, terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) show a wide range of pharmaceutical activities that are beneficial for clinical treatments. produces approximately 130 identified TIAs and is considered to be a model plant to study TIA biosynthesis. In order to increase the production of high medical value metabolites whose yields are extremely low in , genetic engineering combined with transcriptional regulation has been applied in recent years. By using bioinformatics which is based on RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data from methyl jasmonate (MeJA)-treated as well as phylogenetic analysis, the present work aims to screen candidate genes that may be involved in the regulation of TIA biosynthesis, resulting in a novel AP2/ERF transcription factor, CR1 (Catharanthus roseus 1). Subsequently, virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) of was carried out to identify the involvement of CR1 in the accumulations of several TIAs and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was then applied to detect the expression levels of 7 genes in the related biosynthetic pathway in silenced plants. The results show that all the 7 genes were upregulated in -silenced plants. Furthermore, metabolite analyses indicate that silencing could increase the accumulations of vindoline and serpentine in . These results suggest a novel negative regulator which may be involved in the TIAs biosynthetic pathway.