Streptococcus mutans, the major causative agent of dental caries, adheres to tooth surfaces via the host salivary glycoprotein-340 (gp340). This adherence can be competitively inhibited by peptides derived from the SspA/B adhesins of Streptococcus gordonii, a human commensal microbe that competes for the same binding sites. Ssp(A4K-A11K), a double-lysine substituted SspA/B peptide analogue, has...

New gene formation by polyploidy has been an ongoing process during the evolution of various eukaryotes that has contributed greatly to the large number of genes in their genomes. After duplication, some genes that are retained can acquire new functions or expression patterns, or subdivide their functions or expression patterns between duplicates. Here, we show that SHORT SUSPENSOR (SSP) and Br...

Paeonins A and B, new monoterpene galactosides have been isolated from the chloroform-soluble fraction of the roots of Paeonia emodi and showed potent lipoxygenase inhibitory activity. The structures of 1 and 2 have been assigned on the basis of spectral analysis including one- and two-dimensional NMR techniques.

(+/-)-Paeonilide, a novel monoterpenoid metabolite from the roots of Paeonia delavayi showing anti-platelet activating factor activity, is convergently synthesized in five steps with 59% overall yield. The application of benzoyl peroxide-promoted radical addition of unsaturated ester to aldehyde and subsequent topologically favored cyclization greatly simplified the synthesis.

Peony (Paeonia lactiflora Pall-) is a plant medicine and a functional food ingredient with wide application for more than 2000 years. It can be coadministrated with many other drugs, composed of traditional Chinese medicine compound such as shaoyao-gancao decoction. In order to explore the efficacy and safety of peony, effects of paeoniflorin and albiflorin (the principal components of peony) o...

Background. Optimal treatment practices and factors associated with in-hospital mortality in spontaneous pneumothorax (SP) are not fully understood. We evaluated prevalence, clinical characteristics, and in-hospital mortality among Japanese patients with primary or secondary SP (PSP/SSP). Methods. We retrospectively reviewed and stratified 938 instances of pneumothorax in 751 consecutive patien...

Six different types of bacteria (five strains of lactic acid bacterium and one strain of coliform) isolated from 35-day-old Serra cheese were assayed for proteolytic and lipolytic activities on milk agar and tributyrin agar, respectively. Peptidase and lipase activities were further studied via analytical assaying of free amino acids by spectrophotometry and of free fatty acids by HPLC in in vi...

Strategies of the structural synthesis of programs (SSP) of a deductive program synthesis method which is suited for compositional programming in large and is in practical use in a number of programming environments are outlined. SSP is based on a decidable logical calculus where complexity of the proof search is still PSPACE. This requires paying special attention to efficiency of search. Besi...

Strong stability preserving (SSP) high order time discretizations were developed for solution of semi-discrete method of lines approximations of hyperbolic partial differential equations. These high order time discretization methods preserve the strong stability properties–in any norm or seminorm—of the spatial discretization coupled with first order Euler time stepping. This paper describes th...

OBJECTIVE. This retrospective study explored sensory processing characteristics in preschool-age children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD); the relationships between sensory processing and problem behavior, adaptive behavior, and cognitive function; and the differences in sensory processing between two subgroups (autism and pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified). METHOD. ...