Gastrodin is a phenolic glycoside and the principal bioactive compound of Gastrodia elata. Owing to its potent neuroprotective, antioxidant, and therapeutic properties, gastrodin has attracted increasing attention and is now widely applied in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and food industries. Traditional extraction of gastrodin is constrained by limited raw material availability and low yield, making it insufficient to meet the growing market demand. In recent years, microbial biosynthesis has become a preferred route for gastrodin production due to its sustainability, economic feasibility, and high safety. Therefore, developing metabolically engineered strains with enhanced genetic stability, high productivity, and efficient substrate utilization has become an urgent priority for achieving gastrodin biosynthesis. This review introduces the discovery and biosynthetic routes of gastrodin, summarizes its production methods, and discusses recent advances across various microbial chassis systems. It further highlights recent advances in pathway reconstruction and metabolic optimization, with an emphasis on strategies to enhance precursor flux, optimize UDP-glucose biosynthesis and regeneration, and improve glycosyltransferase catalytic activity through protein engineering. Overall, this review provides insights and future directions for developing efficient, genetically stable, and industrially scalable microbial cell factories for sustainable gastrodin production.
Extensive investigations have revealed the precipitation of nanometer-scale silicides, identified as G-phase, within the ferritic matrix of duplex stainless steels during prolonged thermal aging. These silicides typically exhibit a well-defined coherent orientation relationship with the ferrite matrix, specifically (100G//100F, 110G//110F, 111G//111F). Consequently, the authors and their research team proposed a novel concept in 2015: utilizing the G-phase as a primary strengthening phase. It was proposed that through strategic alloy design, these silicides—ordinarily considered deleterious in duplex stainless steels—could be used to develop a new generation of dispersion-strengthened ferritic stainless steels. This approach aims to significantly enhance the yield strength of the alloy while maintaining excellent tensile ductility. Over the past decade, the authors and their research team have focused on nanoscale G-phase dispersion-strengthened ferritic stainless steels. By combining first-principles calculations with thermodynamic database-driven alloy design, a series of new ferritic stainless steel systems based on G-phase strengthening has been developed. These efforts have yielded extensive fundamental results regarding the compositional control, microstructural design, and mechanical properties of silicide-strengthened 20Cr ferritic stainless steels. Based on a comprehensive review of the existing literature, this paper further summarizes the compositional design criteria and microstructural control strategies for G-phase strengthened steels. It is hoped that this work will encourage further fundamental research and industrial applications in this field.
Persistent SARS-CoV-2 antigen has been proposed as a driver of post-COVID condition (PCC), with targeted mass spectrometry multiple reaction monitorin/selected reaction monitoring (MRM/SRM) increasingly invoked as quantitative evidence. We appraise the targeted-MS literature on SARS-CoV-2 antigen in genuine human clinical specimens and re-analyse a focal study, which reported spike and nucleocapsid “protein” concentrations in ng/µL from two proteotypic peptides per target with 13C/15N internal standards. These values are either physically impossible as intact protein or, more likely, raw peptide concentrations reported without the required ≈122-fold molecular-weight correction. Only 15 of 65 patients (26%) had cellular pellet spike above the authors’ own limit of quantification; nucleocapsid was essentially undetectable; and in those 15, the nucleocapsid: spike molar ratio was strongly inverted relative to intact virions, incompatible with a viral source. Critically, no targeted-MS method has ever quantified spike in human blood—the prior literature is nucleocapsid detection in respiratory specimens and spike quantification in vaccine or recombinant material—so the reported blood-spike values lack any validated precedent and exceed the most sensitive validated platform (single-molecule arrays) by several orders of magnitude, with no enrichment step. Finally, 77% of the cohort was vaccinated, and a measurable spike was concentrated among vaccinated individuals. The source’s own supplement inconsistently reports vaccination status. Their 2024 predecessor publication withheld it entirely. The MRM/SRM data, therefore, do not support persistent viral antigen as a general driver of PCC. Minimum standards are proposed: molar reporting, strict limit-of-quantification (LOQ) compliance, qualifier-ion confirmation, vaccine-discrimination peptides, stoichiometric cross-validation, and vaccination-status disclosure. We suggest that the cellular blood component, routinely discarded, warrants direct investigation in the context of spike persistence and PCC symptoms.
Biotechnological methods, particularly in vitro and tissue culture techniques, represent valuable tools for the large-scale multiplication, genetic improvement, and conservation of numerous plant species. Among these, axillary shoot proliferation based on culture of meristems is the most commonly applied micropropagation strategy, as it generally ensures high genetic stability in the regenerated plants. Here, we review the implementation of this micropropagation technique in two important ornamental species of the genus Camellia: C. japonica cv ‘Alba Plena’ and C. reticulata cv ‘Captain Rawes’, both of notable horticultural interest due to the aesthetic and commercial value of their flowers. Through this micropropagation technique, vigorous and healthy plantlets were obtained, acclimatized, and subsequently transferred to ex vitro conditions, demonstrating the feasibility of this propagation system for the production, maintenance, and potential enhancement of elite Camellia germplasm. In vitro cultures of both species were successfully maintained under cold storage conditions for at least 18 months, preserving their viability and regenerative capacity. Importantly, the protocols described here were established using adult camellia material, a plant material often considered more challenging for in vitro propagation due to reduced morphogenic competence.
The frequent failure of headstarting programs suggests we are overlooking important factors in amphibian reintroduction science. Since many repatriation efforts are in vain, such programs can become difficult to justify from a cost-benefit perspective (chronic failure also takes its toll on staff morale), ultimately working against the goals of conservation programs. The question of how to properly prepare amphibian larvae or juveniles for reintroduction and persistence in the landscape is of utmost importance. Here, we offer a previously unconsidered perspective that is predicated on the idea that amphibians, being vertebrates, have forebrain-based cognitive capabilities aligned along the nucleus accumbens-based reward system and the amygdaloid nuclei-based fear system. Experiences uploaded by the ventromedial pallium as memories are thought to be tagged as accumbens-based ‘good’ or amygdala-based ‘bad’, and stored as (relatively) long-term memories; as such, amphibians are said to be salient creatures. The necessarily nurturing nature of zoo husbandry protocols naturally works against young amphibians acquiring ecologically realistic life lessons, especially when these forebrain reward and fear circuits are developing. For example, in zoos, food provisioning eliminates the reward associated with searching for and then finding food, and the emphasis on survival in captivity means headstarted animals released into the wild have no opportunity to experience fear. Such under-stimulated reward/fear circuits poorly prepare headstarted animals for life in the wild. It follows that kindling this circuitry as it develops with ecologically relevant stimuli will better prepare animals for life following release into the wild. To the extent that realistic headstarting protocols call for sacrificing a few animals to enhance the experiences of the remaining many, they will no doubt be resisted by institutions. But we have two choices here: keep doing things the way we have been doing and expect different outcomes, or experiment with new ideas based on a broader understanding of these animals—ideas such as these we are now proposing—to improve the success of repatriation efforts.
