2015 December - 55 articles
Proper formation and maturation of synapses during development is a crucial step in building the functional neural circuits that underlie perception and behavior. It is well established that experience modifies circuit development. Therefore, underst...
Fallopian adenocarcinoma is a rare malignancy arising in the epithelium of the fallopian tube. Fallopian tube epithelium has been proposed as a tissue origin for high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma, the deadliest gynecologic malignancy. Given the com...
The amino acid glutamate is the principal excitatory transmitter in the nervous system, including in sensory neurons that convey pain sensation from the periphery to the brain. It is now well established that a family of membrane proteins, termed ves...
BMI1 plays critical roles in maintaining the self-renewal of hematopoietic, neural, intestinal stem cells, and cancer stem cells (CSCs) for a variety of cancer types. BMI1 promotes cell proliferative life span and epithelial to mesenchymal transition...
Iron homeostasis is highly regulated in vertebrates through a regulatory system mediated by RNA-protein interactions between the iron regulatory proteins (IRPs) that interact with an iron responsive element (IRE) located in certain mRNAs, dubbed the...
The zona pellucida (ZP) surrounds the mammalian oocyte and mediates species-selective sperm-oocyte interactions. Bovine ZP consists of glycoproteins ZP2, ZP3, and ZP4. Neither ZP3 nor ZP4 alone shows inhibitory activity for the binding of sperm to th...
For decades, radiotherapy and chemotherapy were the two only approaches exploiting DNA repair processes to fight against cancer. Nowadays, cancer therapeutics can be a major challenge when it comes to seeking personalized targeted medicine that is bo...
Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies and has a poor prognosis due to relatively unspecific early symptoms, and thus often advanced stage, metastasized cancer at presentation. Metastasis of EOC oc...
Chronic alcoholics who also binge drink (i.e., acute on chronic) are prone to an exacerbated liver injury but its mechanism is not understood. We therefore investigated the in vivo effects of chronic and binge ethanol ingestion and compared to chroni...
Rats artificially selected over several generations for high intrinsic endurance/aerobic capacity resulting in high capacity runners (HCR) has been developed to study the links between high aerobic fitness and protection from metabolic diseases (Wisl...
Alcohol consumption and its abuse is a major health problem resulting in significant healthcare cost in the United States. Chronic alcoholism results in damage to most of the vital organs in the human body. Among the alcohol-induced injuries, alcohol...
Alcohol abuse causes 79,000 deaths stemming from severe organ damage in the United States every year. Clinical manifestations of long-term alcohol abuse on the cardiac muscle include defective contractility with the development of dilated cardiomyopa...
The characterization of the binding of reducing carbohydrates present as mixtures of anomers in solution to a sugar recepor (lectin) poses severe difficulties. In this situation, NMR spectroscopy enables the observation of signals for each anomer in...
Preeclampsia (PE) is characterized by hypertension occurring after the twentieth week of pregnancy. It is a significant contributor to maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality in developing countries and its pervasiveness is increasing within d...
CD44, a cell surface glycoprotein, has been increasingly implicated in the pathogenesis and progression of epithelial ovarian cancer, the deadliest gynecologic malignancy in women. Here, we review recent reports on the expression and function of CD44...
Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the human brain whose binding to receptors on neurons excites them while excess glutamate are removed from synapses via transporter proteins. Determination of the crystal structures of bacterial a...
Acute inflammation, an integral part of host defence and immunity, is a highly conserved cellular response to pathogens and other harmful stimuli. An inflammatory stimulation triggers transcriptional activation of selective pro-inflammatory genes tha...
As the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system, glutamate plays a key role in many central pathologies, including gliomas, psychiatric, neurodevelopmental, and neurodegenerative disorders. Post-mortem and serological...
The RNA cleavage activity of RNase P can be employed to decrease the levels of specific RNAs and to study their function or even to eradicate pathogens. Two different technologies have been developed to use RNase P as a tool for RNA knockdown. In one...
Alcoholics suffer from immune dysfunction that can impede vaccine efficacy. If ethanol (EtOH)-induced immune impairment is in part a result of direct exposure of immune cells to EtOH, then reduced levels of exposure could result in less immune dysfu...
Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes results in the formation of reactive aldehydes in the lung, which are capable of forming adducts with several proteins and DNA. Acetaldehyde and malondialdehyde are the major aldehydes generated in high levels...
Alcoholic liver disease is one of the most prevalent liver diseases worldwide, and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Alcoholic hepatitis is a severe form of liver injury in patients with alcohol abuse, can present as an acute on chronic live...
The number of factors known to participate in the DNA damage response (DDR) has expanded considerably in recent years to include splicing and alternative splicing factors. While the binding of splicing proteins and ribonucleoprotein complexes to nasc...
During the lifespan of cells, their genomic DNA is continuously exposed to theendogenous and exogenous DNA insults. Thus, the appropriate cellular response to DNAdamage plays a pivotal role in maintaining genomic integrity and also acts as a molecula...
The recognition, signalling and repair of DNA double strand breaks (DSB) involves the participation of a multitude of proteins and post-translational events that ensure maintenance of genome integrity. Amongst the proteins involved are several which...
Post-transcriptional mechanisms play critical roles in the control of gene expression during neuronal development and maturation as they allow for faster responses to environmental cues and provide spatially-restricted compartments for local control...
Generation of a stable, soluble mimic of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env) trimer on the virion surface has been considered an important first step for developing a successful HIV-1 vaccine. Recently, a soluble native-like Env trimer (BG505 SOSIP...
Unspliced, genomic HIV-1 RNA (vRNA) is a component of several ribonucleoprotein complexes (RNP) during the viral replication cycle. In earlier work, we demonstrated that the host upframeshift protein 1 (UPF1), a key factor in nonsense-mediated mRNA d...
Ethanol (EtOH) is the world’s most commonly used drug, and has been widely recognized as a risk factor for developing lung disorders. Chronic EtOH exposure affects all of the organ systems in the body and increases the risk of developing pulmonary di...
Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) is an evolutionary conserved molecular chaperone that, together with Hsp70 and co-chaperones makes up the Hsp90 chaperone machinery, stabilizing and activating more than 200 proteins, involved in protein homeostasis (i.e...
Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a major health problem worldwide, and alcohol is well-known to cause mitochondrial damage, which exacerbates alcohol-induced liver injury and steatosis. No successful treatments are currently available for treating AL...
Alcohol consumption causes nicotinic acid deficiency. The present study was undertaken to determine whether dietary nicotinic acid supplementation provides beneficial effects on alcohol-induced endotoxin signaling and the possible mechanisms at the g...
Autophagy is an intracellular pathway by which lysosomes degrade and recycle long-lived proteins and cellular organelles. The effects of ethanol on autophagy are complex but recent studies have shown that autophagy serves a protective function agains...
Accumulation and misfolding of the alpha-synuclein protein are core mechanisms in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease. While the normal function of alpha-synuclein is mainly related to the control of vesicular neurotransmission, its pathogenic ef...
The evolutionarily-conserved La-related protein (LARP) family currently comprises Genuine La, LARP1, LARP1b, LARP4, LARP4b, LARP6 and LARP7. Emerging evidence suggests each LARP has a distinct role in transcription and/or mRNA translation that is att...
Chronic inflammation is a common process connecting pathologies that vary in their etiology and pathogenesis such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and infections. The response of the immune system to tissue damage involves a carefully choreographed se...
Glutamine-fructose-6-phosphate transaminase 1 (GFPT1) is the first enzyme of the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway. It transfers an amino group from glutamine to fructose-6-phosphate to yield glucosamine-6-phosphate, thus providing the precursor for ur...
Studying the regulation of transcription of the gal operon that encodes the amphibolic pathway of d-galactose metabolism in Escherichia coli discerned a plethora of principles that operate in prokaryotic gene regulatory processes. In this chapter, we...
A new mass spectrometry imaging approach to simultaneously map the two-dimensional distribution of N-glycans in tissues has been recently developed. The method uses Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Imaging Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-IMS) to...
Alcohol abuse is a significant contributor to the global burden of disease and can lead to tissue damage and organ dysfunction in a subset of alcoholics. However, a subset of alcoholics without any of these predisposing factors can develop alcohol-me...
Emerging evidence from both experimental animal studies and clinical human investigations demonstrates strong connections among circadian processes, alcohol use, and alcohol-induced tissue injury. Components of the circadian clock have been shown to...
Ethanol abuse affects virtually all organ systems and the central nervous system (CNS) is particularly vulnerable to excessive ethanol exposure. Ethanol exposure causes profound damages to both the adult and developing brain. Prenatal ethanol exposur...
This review on recent research advances of the lipid peroxidation product 4-hydroxy-nonenal (HNE) has four major topics: I. the formation of HNE in various organs and tissues, II. the diverse biochemical reactions with Michael adduct formation as th...
The ADAR proteins deaminate adenosine to inosine in double-stranded RNA which is one of the most abundant modifications present in mammalian RNA. Inosine can have a profound effect on the RNAs that are edited, not only changing the base-pairing prope...
Posttranscriptional modifications of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) are key processes in the fine-tuning of cellular homeostasis. Two major actors in this scenario are RNA binding proteins (RBPs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) that together play important roles in t...
The maintenance of genomic integrity is an important process in organisms as failure to sense and repair damaged DNA can result in a variety of diseases. Eukaryotic cells have developed complex DNA repair response (DDR) mechanisms to accurately sense...
The Ras-related C3 botulinum toxin substrate 1 (Rac1) belongs to the family of Ras-homologous small GTPases. It is well characterized as a membrane-bound signal transducing molecule that is involved in the regulation of cell motility and adhesion as...
Ion pairs (also known as salt bridges) of electrostatically interacting cationic and anionic moieties are important for proteins and nucleic acids to perform their function. Although numerous three-dimensional structures show ion pairs at functionall...
Constitutive activation of oncogenes by fusion to partner genes, caused by chromosome translocation and inversion, is a critical genetic event driving lung carcinogenesis. Fusions of the tyrosine kinase genes ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase), ROS1 (c...
Both Alcoholic Liver Disease (ALD) and alcohol-related susceptibility to acute lung injury are estimated to account for the highest morbidity and mortality related to chronic alcohol abuse and, thus, represent a focus of intense investigation. In gen...
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