Dietary supplementation with whole blueberries in a preclinical study resulted in a reduction in glucose concentrations over time. We sought to evaluate the effect of daily dietary supplementation with bioactives from blueberries on whole-body insulin sensitivity in men and women. A double-blinded, randomized, and placebo-controlled clinical study design was used. After screening to resolve stu...

The unresolved ecophysiological significance of Dark Septate Endophytes (DSE) may be in part due to existence of morphologically indistinguishable cryptic species in the most common Phialocephala fortinii s. l.--Acephala applanata species complex (PAC). We inoculated three middle European forest plants (European blueberry, Norway spruce and silver birch) with 16 strains of eight PAC cryptic spe...

The mold flora of certain frozen pastries and chicken pies was investigated. Molds were determined qualitatively or quantitatively, or both, by preparing pour plates of the blended product and incubating the plates at various temperatures. The mesophilic fungal flora developed on plates incubated at 10 and 20 C, whereas psychrophilic fungi were obtained on plates incubated at 0 and 5 C. About 2...

Dietary polyphenols may contribute to the prevention of several degenerative diseases, including cancer. Anthocyanins have been shown to possess potential anticancer activity. The aim of this study was to determine anthocyanin bioavailability in lung tissue of mice fed a blueberry diet (5% w/w) for 10 days or a bolus dose (10 mg/mouse; po) of a native mixture of bilberry anthocyanidins. All fiv...

Growing evidence from tissue culture, animal, and clinical models suggests that the flavonoid-rich fruits of the North American cranberry and blueberry (Vaccinium spp.) have the potential ability to limit the development and severity of certain cancers and vascular diseases including atherosclerosis, ischemic stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases of aging. The fruits contain a variety of phyto...

miRNAs are important regulators of plant gene expression. To better characterize their functions, we applied high-throughput sequencing and degradome analyses to investigate three blueberry (Vaccinium ashei) tissues. A total of 127 known and 101 novel miRNAs were identified. Moreover, 141 targets for 42 known and 19 novel miRNAs were experimentally validated by degradome sequencing. A functiona...

Modern agriculture relies on domesticated pollinators such as the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), and to a lesser extent on native pollinators, for the production of animal-pollinated crops. There is growing concern that pollinator availability may not keep pace with increasing agricultural production. However, whether crop production is in fact pollen-limited at the field scale has rarely been ...

Objective This study aimed to explore the immunoregulatory effect of flavonoids of blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum L.) leaves (FBL). Methods The flavonoids of blueberry leaves were prepared with 70% ethanol and were identified by ultraperformance liquid chromatography/quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/Q-Tof-MS). The immunoregulatory effect and possible regulatory mechanisms of...

Five soluble polysaccharide fractions were sequentially extracted with water, EDTA, Na2CO3, 4% KOH, and 14% KOH solutions at room temperature for 4 h from cell wall material of rabbiteye blueberry (Vaccinium ashei) fruits, and their physicochemical properties were examined. The sequential treatments yielded a total 36.02% soluble polysaccharides of the dry cell wall material. HPAEC and spectros...

Plants are proven sources of useful anti-tumor and chemopreventative compounds. Hence, identification of phytochemicals useful in dietary prevention and intervention of cancer is of paramount importance. The initial step in the formation of cancer is damage to the genome of a somatic cell producing a mutation in an oncogene or a tumor-suppressor gene. Fresh juices and organic solvent extracts f...