Project description:We demonstrate that blueberry supplementation led to global changes in the gut microbiome, which could possibly contribute to physiological changes in mice
Project description:Appropriate nutrition during early development is essential for optimal bone mass accretion; however, linkage between early nutrition, childhood bone mass and prevention of bone loss later in life has not been extensively studied. In this report, we have demonstrated several fundamental issues in the field. 1) A significant prevention of ovariectomy (OVX) -induced bone loss from adult rats can occur with only 14 days consumption of a blueberry-containing diet immediately prior to puberty. 2) The molecular mechanisms underlying these effects involve increased myosin production and preserved a shuttle for transcription factors such as Runx2 from cytoplasm to nucleolus which stimulates osteoblast differentiation and reduces mesenchymal stromal cell senescence. 3) The effects of blueberry diet on preserving fidelity of osteoblast differentiation also overcome reduced osteoblast differentiation and activity due to OVX-induced degradation of collagen matrix. Bone quality was compared among casein control diet sham operated, casein diet ovariectomized, long term BB diet ovariectomized, and short term BB diet ovariectomized female rats
Project description:Appropriate nutrition during early development is essential for optimal bone mass accretion; however, linkage between early nutrition, childhood bone mass and prevention of bone loss later in life has not been extensively studied. In this report, we have demonstrated several fundamental issues in the field. 1) A significant prevention of ovariectomy (OVX) -induced bone loss from adult rats can occur with only 14 days consumption of a blueberry-containing diet immediately prior to puberty. 2) The molecular mechanisms underlying these effects involve increased myosin production and preserved a shuttle for transcription factors such as Runx2 from cytoplasm to nucleolus which stimulates osteoblast differentiation and reduces mesenchymal stromal cell senescence. 3) The effects of blueberry diet on preserving fidelity of osteoblast differentiation also overcome reduced osteoblast differentiation and activity due to OVX-induced degradation of collagen matrix.
Project description:In the present study, we employed the high-throughput sequencing technology to profile miRNAs in blueberry fruits. A total of 9,992,446 small RNA tags with sizes ranged from 18 to 30 nt were obtained, indicating that blueberry fruits have a large and diverse small RNA population. Bioinformatic analysis has identified 412 conserved miRNAs, which belong to 20 families, and 57 predicted novel miRNAs likely unique to blueberries. Among them, expression profiles of 5 conserved miRNAs were validated by stem loop qRT-PCR. Furthermore, the potential target genes of the abundant conserved and novel miRNAs were predicted and subjected for Gene Ontology (GO) annotation. Enrichment analysis of the GO-represented biological processes and molecular functions revealed that these target genes were involved in a wide range of metabolic and developmental processes. This study is the first report on genome-wide miRNA profile analysis in blueberry and it provides a useful resource for further elucidation of the functional roles of miRNAs during fruit development and ripening.