## 3 Results
### GP Attenuated DSS-Induced Acute Colitis Symptoms  
Several studies have reported that the DSS-induced mice would have the symptoms of weight loss, colon shortening, as well as hematochezia [23]. As revealed in Figure 3A,  
Figure 1: Distribution of peptides numbers in GP. Figure 2: Anti-inflammatory activity of GP in RAW264.7 cells. (**A**) Effects of GP on the secretion of NO; (**B**) Effects of GP on the secretion of TNF-\(\alpha\); The mRNA expression of TNF-\(\alpha\) (**C**), IL-6 (**D**), IL-16 (**E**) in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. NC means negative control; PC means positive control (LPS final concentration was 1 ug/mL); the GP was treated within concentration of 0.1, 0.5, 1.0 mg/mL. Different letters (a–d) represent significant differences (\(p<0.05\), \(n=8\)) according to the one-way ANOVA (Tukey’s Multiple Comparison Test) analysis. the mice trials were separated with NC, PC, GP-1, and GP-2 groups. In the NC group, the body weight of mice was increased gradually and reached 25.8 g at the end of the trial of Day 20 (Figure 3B). Compared with NC, the DSS treatment inspired significant body-weight loss in the PC and GP group during the former 10 days. Starting from day 4, the body weight decreased gradually until day 12. As expected, the GP treatments could attenuate body weight losing tendency compared with the PC group. In special, diarrhea and stool bleeding symptoms were also revealed the IBD condition according to the DAI scores (Supplement Figure S2). After the GP treatment, the DAI values were alleviated compared with PC. Known from the length of the colon, the DSS treatment was shown to shorten the colon from 8.23 cm (NC) to 7.65 cm (PC), whereas the GP treatment could recover the colon length compared with PC (Figure 3C,D; \(p<0.05\)). Without the inflammatory stimulation, the colon showed intact colonic mucosa, crypts, stroma, and submuc, and few inflammatory cells infiltrated in submuc and ulceration in NC (Figure 4A). After DSS treatment, the mice showed intense inflammatory lesions, including the hyperplasia of crypts, the increased macroscopic spaces between crypts, severe epithelial cells damage, submucosal edema, and inflammatory cellular infiltration in the submuc, which were similar to the previous report on the DSS-induced colitis model [11]. However, the treatments of GP ameliorated the inflammatory symptoms in the colon, including relative intact surface epithelium, lower infiltration of inflammatory cells, mild submucosal edema, and crypt glands close to NC. According to the histopathological score (Figure 4B), the PC groups showed much higher scores than NC (\(p<0.05\)), and  
Figure 3: GP attenuated DSS-induced colitis in mice. Experimental design for the mice with DSS-induced colitis. The mice were assigned to four groups (**A**): NC, normal control; PC, positive control (1.5% DSS was supplied in water); GP-1 and GP-2, oral with 100 and 300 mg/kg/day respectively. (**B**) the change of body weight of mice during the trial. (**C**) Photographs of the colon. (**D**) Length of colon. All values represent the means \(\pm\) SD (\(n=8\)), and different letters represent significantly different of \(p<0.05\) according to the one-way ANOVA (Tukey’s Multiple Comparison Test) analysis. the pretreatment of GP decreased histopathological score as being expected (\(p<0.05\)). In the study of [PERSON] et al. (2011), the body weight of mice was decreased after 8 days of DSS treatment. Depending on the DAI score, the body weight and the colon length were all alleviated in the supplement of dicaffeoylquinic acids revealing the anti-inflammatory effect of dicaffeoylquinic acids in IBD mice. The intake of \(\gamma\)-Glutamyl cysteine peptides (\(\gamma\)-EC, 150 mg/kg) was also checked to suppress the IBD symptoms of reducing weight loss, stool blood, and diarrhea levels in colitis mice.