The sense of taste is critical in determining the nutritional suitability of foods. Sweet and bitter are primary taste modalities in mammals, and their behavioral relevance is similar in flies. Sweet taste drives the appetitive response to energy sources, whereas bitter taste drives avoidance of potential toxins and also suppresses the sweet response [1, 2]. Despite their importance to survival...

High temperature environment causes detrimental effects on health. In the present study, the effects of intake of several kinds of beverage on blood components during exercise under the high temperature environment were evaluated. The 10 subjects were student of the H University. Exercise intensity was 50-60% O2maxx and treadmill exercise was continued for 1 h. The kinds of beverage were water,...

Cucumber gray mold caused by Botrytis cinerea is considered one of the most serious cucumber diseases. With the advent of Hi-seq technology, it is possible to study the plant-pathogen interaction at the transcriptome level. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of RNA-seq to identify cucumber and B. cinerea differentially expressed genes (DEGs) before and after the plant-p...

BACKGROUND Autotoxicity of cucumber root exudates or decaying residues may be the cause of the soil sickness of cucumber. However, how autotoxins affect soil microbial communities is not yet fully understood. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The aims of this study were to study the effects of an artificially applied autotoxin of cucumber, p-coumaric acid, on cucumber seedling growth, rhizospher...

BACKGROUND Bitter taste is the primary culprit for rejection of pediatric liquid medications. We probed the underlying biology of bitter sensing and the efficacy of two known bitter blockers in children and adults. METHODS A racially diverse group of 154 children (3-10 years old) and their mothers (N = 118) evaluated the effectiveness of two bitter blockers, sodium gluconate (NaG) and monosod...

Food contains complex blends of structurally diverse bitter compounds that trigger bitterness through activation of one or more of the ∼25 human TAS2 bitter taste receptors. It remains unsolved, however, whether the perceived bitterness of binary bitter-compound mixtures can be considered an additive function of all bitter-inducing chemicals in the mouth, suggesting that little mutual interacti...

three experiments were conducted to evaluate the nutritional value of bitter vetch. experiment 1 was conducted to determine the metabolisable energy content of bitter vetch. sixteen adult leghorn roosters were used. forty grams of bitter vetch were precision-fed individually to 12 roosters. in addition, 4 birds were not fed and served as a control treatment in the measurement of metabolic fecal...

Sex differentiation of flower buds is an important developmental process that directly affects fruit yield of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.). Plant hormones, such as gibberellins (GAs) and ethylene can promote development of male and female flowers, respectively, however, the regulatory mechanisms of GA-induced male flower formation and potential involvement of ethylene in this process still rem...

Nitrogen (N) is an important macronutrient for plant growth and development, but the regulatory mechanism of volatile compounds in response to N deficiency is not well understood, especially in cucumber, which consumes excessive N during growth. In this study, the major volatile compounds from cucumber leaves subjected to N deficiency were analyzed by GC-MS. A total of 24 volatile components we...