Abstract In the current research, edible meat of freshwater clam Corbicula fluminea was subjected to enzymatic peptide extraction using animal protease. The clam protein hydrolysate (CPH) contained 45.78% essential amino acids and 44.97% hydrophobic amino acids and showed high alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) activation in vitro. Four fractions were divided from CPH by ultrafiltration and further investigated for their hepatoprotective effects on alcohol-induced injury in mice. The 2.5-5 kDa fraction (CPH-3) showed the best effect for preventing hepatic damage caused by alcohol, as revealed by reduced serum aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) activities and hepatic malondialdehyde (MDA) level, the marked decrease in the hepatic triglyceride (TG) contents, and the enhanced hepatic ADH, aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), and glutathione (GSH) activities. Furthermore, histopathology of CPH-3-treated mice showed less hepatic tissue damage compared to alcohol- or other CPHs-treated mice. Hence, CPH-3 was further purified by consecutive chromatographic techniques with gel filtration and reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. One hepatoprotective peptide, KKLAGFLRYYS (1330.68 Da), was identified by LC-MS/MS, which exhibited strong ADH activation activity. Results suggested that CPH could be a potential nutraceutical for facilitating alcohol metabolism and preventing or ameliorating early liver injury induced by acute alcohol exposure and that the peptide KKLAGFLRYYS is one of the main bioactive components in CPH.

ABSTRACT Picris japonica Thunb., Asteraceae, is an herbal medicine used to dispel heat, reduce swelling and alleviate pain in traditional Mongolian medicine. Its dried whole plant is mainly used to treat flu and mammary abscesses. Given the potential applications of such an herb, detailed pharmacognostic research on P. japonica is needed. This study attempted to fill this need by producing permanent and semi-permanent slides of different organs (root, stem, leaf, pollen grain, fruit and powder of the whole plant) using safranine staining, safranine-fast green double staining and common methods. Furthermore, several featured microscopic structures of P. japonica are described herein. The results obtained provide us with valuable information for botanical quality control and species identification and enable us to detect adulterations in commercial samples of Picris or in laboratory samples.