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Recent Advances in Bioactive Macromolecules from Natural Plants

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Natural Products Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2023) | Viewed by 1294

Special Issue Editors

Center for Mitochondria and Healthy Aging, College of Life Sciences, Yantai University, No. 30 Qingquan Road, Laishan District, Yantai 264005, China
Interests: foods; nutrients; polysaccharides; proteins; immunoregulation; antioxidant; antitumor; mitochondria; healthy aging

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Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Food Nutrition and Safety, College of Food Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300457, China
Interests: polysaccharides; proteins; plants; animals; immunoregulation; antioxidant; antitumor; mitochondria

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, people of all ethnic groups around the world are facing the problems of the high incidence of various diseases due to the increasing degree of natural aging, living pressure, unreasonable diet structure, living environment pollution, etc., which could finally induce reduced living qualities. Therefore, the development of various bioactive substances in natural plants has become a research hotspot. The macromolecular active substances commonly exist in plants and are mainly composed of polysaccharides and proteins. The different extraction technologies will directly lead to the diversity in the structural characteristics of the products and then lead to the differences in various biological activities. In addition, the structural characterization of polysaccharides and proteins in multiple plant varieties is also different. Therefore, the study of structure–activity relationship of macromolecular bioactive substances in natural plants is very charming, and I am very honored to participate in the collection of relevant unique and interesting research results.

Dr. Hai-Yu Ji
Prof. Dr. Anjun Liu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • macromolecular bioactive substances
  • polysaccharides
  • proteins
  • structural characterization
  • bioactivities
  • interrelation

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

14 pages, 9840 KiB  
Article
The Protective Effects of Water-Soluble Alginic Acid on the N-Terminal of Thymopentin
by Haiyu Ji, Yuting Fan, Xiaoji Gao, Youshun Gong, Keyao Dai, Zhenhua Wang, Bo Xu and Juan Yu
Molecules 2023, 28(18), 6445; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28186445 - 05 Sep 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 998
Abstract
Thymopentin (TP5) has exhibited strong antitumor and immunomodulatory effects in vivo. However, the polypeptide is rapidly degraded by protease and aminopeptidase within a minute at the N-terminal of TP5, resulting in severe limitations for further practical applications. In this study, the protective effects [...] Read more.
Thymopentin (TP5) has exhibited strong antitumor and immunomodulatory effects in vivo. However, the polypeptide is rapidly degraded by protease and aminopeptidase within a minute at the N-terminal of TP5, resulting in severe limitations for further practical applications. In this study, the protective effects of water-soluble alginic acid (WSAA) on the N-terminal of TP5 were investigated by establishing an H22 tumor-bearing mice model and determining thymus, spleen, and liver indices, immune cells activities, TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-2, and IL-4 levels, and cell cycle distributions. The results demonstrated that WSAA+TP5 groups exhibited the obvious advantages of the individual treatments and showed superior antitumor effects on H22 tumor-bearing mice by effectively protecting the immune organs, activating CD4+ T cells and CD19+ B cells, and promoting immune-related cytokines secretions, finally resulting in the high apoptotic rates of H22 cells through arresting them in S phase. These data suggest that WSAA could effectively protect the N-terminal of TP5, thereby improving its antitumor and immunoregulatory activities, which indicates that WSAA has the potential to be applied in patients bearing cancer or immune deficiency diseases as a novel immunologic adjuvant. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Bioactive Macromolecules from Natural Plants)
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