Nelumbo nucifera promotes non-rapid eye movement sleep by regulating GABAergic receptors in rat model (2024)

Chronic sleep deficiency, a public health epidemic, triggers an elevated risk for physical and mental disorders and may cause unpleasant sensations or experiences in daily life. Importantly, sleep-associated skin diseases attract public attention because most people have anxiety about their facial appearance in modern society. Amounts of health food, especially derived from edible and efficient plant extracts, have been developed for skincare via improvement of sleep quality. Mechanisms of good sleep and healthy skin have been studied, however, the relationship between sleep-promoting herbs and skincare is less elucidated. In this review, we summarize the main signaling pathways of neurotransmitter-mediated skin beauty and list dozens of functional plant extracts for sleep assistance. We conclude several plant candidates for oral cosmetics application through sleep-related neurotransmitters regulation. This review provides pieces of evidence for the application of oral cosmetic food derived from plant extracts in sleep-related beauty.

Journal of Proteomics, Volume 131, 2016, pp. 61-70

Lotus is an aquatic plant with high nutritional, ornamental and medical values. Its callus formation is crucial for germplasm innovation by genetic transformation. In this study, embryogenic callus was successfully induced on appropriate medium using cotyledons at 12days after pollination as explants. To dissect cellular dedifferentiation and callus formation processes at the proteome level, cotyledons before and tissues from 10 to 20days after induction were sampled for shotgun proteomic analysis. By applying multivariate statistics 91 proteins were detected as differentially regulated, and sorted into 6 functional groups according to MapMan ontology analysis. Most of these proteins were implicated in various metabolisms, demonstrating that plant cells underwent metabolism reprogramming during callus induction. 14.3% proteins were associated with stress and redox, indicating that the detached explants were subjected to a variety of stresses; 13.2% were cell and cell wall-related proteins, suggesting that these proteins played important roles in rapid cell division and proliferation. Some proteins were further evaluated at the mRNA levels by quantitative reverse transcription PCR analysis. In conclusion, the results contributed to further deciphering of molecular processes of cellular dedifferentiation and callus formation, and provided a reference data set for the establishment of transgenic transformation in lotus.

Journal of Chromatography A, Volume 1302, 2013, pp. 174-180

Lotus leaves are a popular remedy in Asia to treat obesity, insomnia and mental impairment; alkaloids are considered most relevant for bioactivity. In this study the first CE method for the determination of all major alkaloids ((−)-nuciferine, (−)-nornuciferine, (−)-caaverine, (−)-armepavine, (+)-norarmepavine, (+)-isoliensinine and (+)-pronuciferine) in Nelumbo nucifera leaves was developed. The optimum buffer showed to be a solution of 100mM ammonium acetate in a mixture of methanol, acetonitrile and water, also containing 0.6% acid acetic. Applied voltage, temperature and detection wavelength were 25kV, 30°C and 225nm; the required analysis time was 15min. By CE–MS all standard compounds could be assigned in positive ESI mode, and two minor alkaloids were tentatively identified (n-nornuciferine and roemerine). A mixture of water, methanol and acetic acid served as sheath liquid in these experiments. The NACE assay was fully validated and utilized to analyze Lotus leaf samples collected in different parts of Vietnam. Respective results revealed significant qualitative and quantitative differences depending on growing area and season. Yet, in all samples (−)-nuciferine (0.34–0.63%), (−)-armepavine (0.13–0.20%), and (+)-isoliensinine (0.06–0.19%) were the most dominant alkaloids. The total alkaloid content varied from 0.72 to 1.41%.

Journal of Chromatography A, Volume 1490, 2017, pp. 115-125

Counter-current chromatography (CCC) is an efficient liquid-liquid partition chromatography technique without support matrix. Despite there are many significant advancements in the CCC separation of natural products especially for non-ionic neutral compounds, CCC isolation of ionic compounds including alkaloids is still a challenging process guide by classical partition coefficients (K) or distribution ratio (K_C) because their partition coefficient could not be equal to distribution ratio in common ionic conditions. Here, taking the extract of embryo of the seed of Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn as sample, we introduced a modified K-targeted strategy for isolation of phenolic alkaloids by use of lysine as a pH regulator. The results indicated that if the mass of basic regulators such as aqueous ammonia and lysine added into the solvent system were high enough to inhibit the ionization of the targeted alkaloids, the distribution ratio of targets with ionic and non-ionic molecular forms got stable and might not been changed as the concentration of the pH regulator. In this case, the distribution ratio of target was almost equal to the partition coefficient. Thus, the targets could be isolated by K-targeted CCC separation through adding a certain amount pH regulators into the solvent system. Further experiments also showed that the sample concentration was an important factor on the distribution ratio of targets. Meanwhile, CCC experiments indicated that lysine was more suitable than aqueous ammonia for the separation of phenolic alkaloids because the chemical property of lysine-target complex in the CCC fractions was more stable. Therefore, the preparative CCC separation was performed using 20mM lysine as a pH regulator with more than 800mg injection mass. After simple back-extraction with dichloromethane, the lysine in the CCC fraction was removed completely and pure isoliensinine and neferine were obtained. In summary, the whole results indicated that the modified K-targeted CCC strategy using lysine as the pH regulator was efficient for isolation of phenolic alkaloids from crude plant extracts. It not only provided a practical strategy for the isolation of neferine and its analogues, but also introduced a powerful method to resolve the peak skewing (leading or tailing) in CCC separation of ionic compounds.

Food Chemistry, Volume 141, Issue 4, 2013, pp. 3598-3605

Previously we have reported that neferine from the medicinal plant Nelumbo nucifera, inhibited cancer cell proliferation by inducing apoptosis. The present study was focused on the action mechanism of neferine in inducing autophagy in lung cancer cells. Neferine markedly inhibited A549 cell proliferation in a dose dependent manner. Acidic vesicular accumulation was observed in neferine treated cells as an indication of autophagy. Neferine could induce the conversion of LC3B-I to LC3B-II without affecting the expression levels of PI3KCIII and Beclin1. It has been observed that neferine mediated autophagy is dependent on inhibition of PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling by neferine. Neferine treatment could also lead to the ROS hypergeneration and depletion of cellular antioxidant, GSH. The results demonstrate that neferine-induced autophagy is mediated through ROS hypergeneration and mTOR inhibition. Taken together, the present study unveils a novel mechanism of action of neferine on lung cancer cells in the induction of autophagy.

Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 137, 2014, pp. 54-60

Domestic wastewater is a source of phosphorus contamination that causes eutrophication when it contaminates aquatic environments. Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn. and Cyperus alternifolius L. were applied for phosphorus removal from domestic wastewater. From the study, phosphorus in domestic wastewater was removed from the initial concentration of 1.038±0.001mgL⁻¹ to 0.094±0.001 and 0.048±0.004mgL⁻¹ by N.nucifera and C.alternifolius, respectively, within 5 days. In addition, total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) also decreased when wetland systems were applied the same as treatment with conventional method (chemical+activated sludge process). However, the plant removed TDS better than the conventional method. During 5 cycles of exposure, the two plants still survived and were healthy. The weight of plants increased after the experiment from 4060±0.05g to 4820±0.17g of N.nucifera, and from 4000±0.00g to 4600±0.14g of C.alternifolius. Phosphorus content also increased in both plants after the experiment. However, in the wetland system, phosphorus was removed mainly by the soil, followed by the plants, and then microorganisms. The domain group in the microbial community of both wetland systems was Pseudomas sp.

Journal of Chromatography A, Volume 1507, 2017, pp. 63-71

The alkaloids from lotus (Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn) are effective in lowering hyperlipemia and level of cholesterol. However, there is not a general method for their separation. In this work, a general ionic liquid pH-zone-refining countercurrent chromatography method for isolation and purification of six alkaloids from the whole lotus plant was successfully established by using ionic liquids as the modifier of the two-phase solvent system. The conditions of ionic liquid pH-zone-refining countercurrent chromatography, involving solvent systems, concentration of retainer and eluter, types of ionic liquids, the content of ionic liquids as well as ionic liquids posttreatment, were optimized to improve extraction efficiency. Finally, the separation of these six alkaloids was performed with a two-phase solvent system composed of n-hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-water-[C₄mim][PF₆] at a volume ratio of 5:2:2:8:0.1, where 10mM TEA was added to the organic stationary phase as a retainer and 3mM HCl was added to the aqueous mobile phase as an eluter. As a result, six alkaloids including N-nornuciferine, liensinine, nuciferine, isoliensinine, roemerine and neferine were successfully separated with the purities of 97.0%, 90.2%, 94.7%, 92.8%, 90.4% and 95.9%, respectively. The established general method has been respectively applied to the crude samples of lotus leaves and lotus plumules. A total of 37.3mg of liensinine, 57.7mg of isoliensinine and 179.9mg of neferine were successfully purified in one run from 1.00g crude extract of lotus plumule with the purities of 93.2%, 96.5% and 98.8%, respectively. Amount of 45.6mg N-nornuciferine, 21.6mg nuciferine and 11.7mg roemerine was obtained in one step separation from 1.05g crude extract of lotus leaves with the purity of 96.9%, 95.6% and 91.33%, respectively.