Cells, Volume 12, Issue 8

Prohibitins (PHBs) are a highly conserved class of proteins and have an essential role in transcription, epigenetic regulation, nuclear signaling, mitochondrial structural integrity, cell division, and cellular membrane metabolism. Prohibitins form a...

Brain channelopathies are a group of neurological disorders that result from genetic mutations affecting ion channels in the brain. Ion channels are specialized proteins that play a crucial role in the electrical activity of nerve cells by controllin...

DNA repair (DNA damage) foci observed 24 h and later after irradiation are called “residual” in the literature. They are believed to be the repair sites for complex, potentially lethal DNA double strand breaks. However, the features of th...

Betel quid and areca nut are complex mixture carcinogens, but little is known about whether their derived single-agent arecoline or arecoline N-oxide (ANO) is carcinogenic, and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this systematic review, we a...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease worldwide, but therapeutic strategies to slow down AD pathology and symptoms have not yet been successful. While attention has been focused on neurodegeneration in AD path...

The enteric nervous system (ENS) is an intrinsic network of neuronal ganglia in the intestinal tube with about 100 million neurons located in the myenteric plexus and submucosal plexus. These neurons being affected in neurodegenerative diseases, such...

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ) belongs to the superfamily of nuclear receptors that control the transcription of multiple genes. Although it is found in many cells and tissues, PPARγ is mostly expressed in the...

The evolutionary conserved WNT signaling pathway orchestrates numerous complex biological processes during development and is critical to the maintenance of tissue integrity and homeostasis in the adult. As it relates to the central nervous system, W...

Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of mortality in the United States. Progenitor cell therapy can restore myocardial structure and function. However, its efficacy is severely limited by cell aging and senescence. Gremlin-1 (GREM1), a member...

The nuclear receptor, constitutive androstane receptor (CAR), which forms a heterodimer with the retinoid X receptor (RXR), was initially reported as a transcription factor that regulates hepatic genes involved in detoxication and energy metabolism....

Tissue engineering bone via endochondral ossification requires the generation of a cartilage template which undergoes vascularisation and remodelling. While this is a promising route for bone repair, achieving effective cartilage vascularisation rema...

Patients diagnosed with isocitrate dehydrogenase mutant (IDH^mut) gliomas suffer frequently from seizures. Although the clinical course is less aggressive than that of its IDH wildtype counterpart, recent discoveries have shown that epileptic activity...

Angiogenesis is the physiological process of developing new blood vessels to facilitate the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to meet the functional demands of growing tissues. It also plays a vital role in the development of neoplastic disorders. Pen...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a SARS-like coronavirus, continues to produce mounting infections and fatalities all over the world. Recent data point to SARS-CoV-2 viral infections in the human testis. As low testostero...

Autophagy is involved in the development of diabetic kidney disease (DKD), the leading cause of end-stage renal disease. The Fyn tyrosine kinase (Fyn) suppresses autophagy in the muscle. However, its role in kidney autophagic processes is unclear. He...

Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) is a specialized type of adipose tissue that surrounds most mammalian blood vessels. PVAT is a metabolically active, endocrine organ capable of regulating blood vessel tone, endothelium function, vascular smooth mus...

Stimulation of hepatic sympathetic nerves increases glucose production and glycogenolysis. Activity of pre-sympathetic neurons in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus and in the ventrolateral and ventromedial medulla (VLM/VMM) largel...

A t(9;11)(p22;q23) translocation produces the MLL-AF9 fusion protein, which is found in up to 25% of de novo AML cases in children. Despite major advances, obtaining a comprehensive understanding of context-dependent MLL-AF9-mediated gene programs du...

The degenerative ataxias comprise a heterogeneous group of inherited and acquired disorders that are characterized by a progressive cerebellar syndrome, frequently in combination with one or more extracerebellar signs. Specific disease-modifying inte...

Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs; embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells) can recapitulate critical aspects of the early stages of embryonic development; therefore, they became a powerful tool for the in vitro study of molecular mechanis...

Super-enhancers (SEs) are cis-regulatory elements of the human genome that have been widely discussed since the discovery and origin of the term. Super-enhancers have been shown to be strongly associated with the expression of genes crucial for cell...

Inflammation and mitochondrial-dependent oxidative stress are interrelated processes implicated in multiple neuroinflammatory disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and depression. Exposure to elevated temperature (hyperthermia) is propo...

Schwann cells (SCs) are myelinating cells that promote peripheral nerve regeneration. When nerve lesions form, SCs are destroyed, ultimately hindering nerve repair. The difficulty in treating nerve repair is exacerbated due to SC’s limited and...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is one of several chronic neurodegenerative conditions in which mitochondrial abnormalities are posited to contribute to disease progression. Therapeutic options targeting mitochondria include enhancing metabolism, suppr...

Mast cells (MCs) are the immune cells distributed throughout nearly all tissues, mainly in the skin, near blood vessels and lymph vessels, nerves, lungs, and the intestines. Although MCs are essential to the healthy immune response, their overactivit...

Oxysterols are oxidized cholesterol derivatives whose systemic levels are found elevated in pregnancy disorders such as gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Oxysterols act through various cellular receptors and serve as a key metabolic signal, coordi...

APOBEC3B (A3B) is aberrantly overexpressed in a subset of breast cancers, where it associates with advanced disease, poor prognosis, and treatment resistance, yet the causes of A3B dysregulation in breast cancer remain unclear. Here, A3B mRNA and pro...

Objectives: With the development of new technologies capable of detecting low concentrations of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) relevant biomarkers, the idea of a blood-based diagnosis of AD is nearing reality. This study aims to consider the evidence...

The presence of stem cells has been previously described in human precancerous and malignant cervical cultures. Previous studies have shown a direct interplay of the stem cell niche, which is present in practically every tissue with the extracellular...

Breast cancer (BC) is a heterogeneous disease, which is primarily classified according to hormone receptors and HER2 expression. Despite the many advances in BC diagnosis and management, the identification of novel actionable therapeutic targets expr...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the degeneration of motor neurons for which effective therapies are lacking. One of the most explored areas of research in ALS is the discovery and validation of biomarkers...

Human-relevant three-dimensional (3D) models of cerebral tissue can be invaluable tools to boost our understanding of the cellular mechanisms underlying brain pathophysiology. Nowadays, the accessibility, isolation and harvesting of human neural cell...

The Nucleosome Remodelling and Deacetylase (NuRD) complex represents one of the major chromatin remodelling complexes in mammalian cells, uniquely coupling the ability to “open” the chromatin by inducing nucleosome sliding with histone de...

The pathogenesis of chronic pain entails a series of complex interactions among the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems. Defined as pain lasting or recurring for more than 3 months, chronic pain is becoming increasingly more prevalent among the US...

Microcephaly with pontine and cerebellar hypoplasia (MICPCH) syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by the deficiency of the X-chromosomal gene CASK. However, the molecular mechanisms by which CASK deficiency causes cerebellar hypoplasia in...

Background: Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs) mediate local antitumor immunity, and interest in them significantly increased since cancer immunotherapy was implemented. We examined TLS− tumor stromal blood vessel interplay for each breast can...

Circular RNAs (CircRNAs) are covalently closed-loop non-coding RNA (ncRNA) molecules present in eukaryotes. Numerous studies have demonstrated that circRNAs are important regulators of bovine fat deposition, but their precise mechanisms remain unclea...

It has been suggested that in vitro studies of the rescue effect of CFTR modulator drugs in nasal epithelial cultures derived from people with cystic fibrosis have the potential to predict clinical responses to the same drugs. Hence, there is an inte...

Psychiatric disorders affect millions of individuals and their families worldwide, and the costs to society are substantial and are expected to rise due to a lack of effective treatments. Personalized medicine—customized treatment tailored to t...

Background: A large amount of evidence from clinical studies has demonstrated that circulating tumor cells are strong predictors of outcomes in many cancers. However, the clinical significance of CTC enumeration in metastatic colorectal cancer is sti...

The articles in this Special Issue address a wide variety of topics concerning molecular and clinical advances in understanding early embryo development [...]

Oxidative stress is a contributing factor to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Considering the prevalence of sporadic PD, environmental exposures are postulated to increase reactive oxygen species and either incite or exacerbate neurodegeneration. We p...

Homologous recombination (HR), an evolutionary conserved pathway, plays a paramount role(s) in genome plasticity. The pivotal HR step is the strand invasion/exchange of double-stranded DNA by a homologous single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) covered by RAD51....

Down syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21 that presents developmental dysfunction and intellectual disability. To better understand the cellular changes associated with DS, we investigated the cell composition...

(1) Background: Cell injection therapy is an emerging treatment for bullous keratopathy (BK). Anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) imaging allows the high-resolution assessment of the anterior chamber. Our study aimed to investigate...

Cardiac diseases are the foremost cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The heart has limited regenerative potential; therefore, lost cardiac tissue cannot be replenished after cardiac injury. Conventional therapies are unable to restore functi...

Since the dawn of the past century, landmark discoveries in cell-mediated immunity have led to a greater understanding of the innate and adaptive immune systems and revolutionised the treatment of countless diseases, including cancer. Today, precisio...

Priming of macrophages with interferon-gamma (IFNγ) or interleukin-4 (IL-4) leads to polarisation into pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory subtypes, which produce key enzymes such as inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and arginase 1 (ARG1...

Herpesviral nuclear egress is a regulated process of viral capsid nucleocytoplasmic release. Due to the large capsid size, a regular transport via the nuclear pores is unfeasible, so that a multistage-regulated export pathway through the nuclear lami...

Aging is an inevitable outcome of life, characterized by a progressive decline in tissue and organ function. At a molecular level, it is marked by the gradual alterations of biomolecules. Indeed, important changes are observed on the DNA, as well as...