Project description:To study the mechanism of protective effect by White Button Mushroom (WBM) for Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) in ovariectomized mice (model for postmenopausal women).
Project description:Tree ring features are affected by environmental factors and therefore are the basis for dendrochronological studies to reconstruct past environmental conditions. Oak wood often provides the data for these studies because of the durability particularly of oak heartwood and, hence the availability of samples spanning long time periods of the distant past. Wood formation is regulated in part by epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation. Studies in the methylation state of DNA preserved in oak heartwood thus could identify epigenetic tree ring features informing on past environmental conditions. We investigated the feasibility of such studies using heartwood samples core-drilled from the trunks of standing oak trees spanning the AD 1776-2014. Heartwood contains little DNA, and large amounts of phenolic compounds known to hinder the preparation of high-throughput sequencing libraries. We sequenced whole-genome and DNA methylome libraries for oak heartwood up to 100 and 50 years of age, respectively. However, only 56 genomic regions with sufficient coverage for quantitative methylation analysis were identified, suggesting that the high-throughput sequencing of DNA will be in principal feasible for wood formed <100 years ago is impeded by the reduction in library complexity caused by the bisulfite treatment used to generate the oak methylome.
Project description:Purpose: To evalute the antagonistic effects of White Button Mushroom/WBM extract on AR signaling in human prostate cance cells. Methods: LNCaP cells were treated with 1 nM DHT, with or without WBM extract (3 μL/mL), for 48h, in triplicates, and total RNA was isolated and sequenced. Results: We identified 155 up-regulated genes (Fold-change ≥ 2, p<0.05) versus 185 down-regulated genes (Fold-change ≤ 0.5, p<0.05). Conclusion: White Button Mushroom suppressed androgen respsonive genens and cell cycle division genes Collectively, these results suggest that WBM extract affects prostate cancer by interrupting AR-dependent cell cycle division and DNA replication.
