Most mammalian genes often feature alternative polyadenylation (APA) sites and hence diverse 3'UTR lengths. Proliferating cells were reported to favor APA sites that result in shorter 3'UTRs. One consequence of such shortening is escape of mRNAs from targeting by microRNAs (miRNAs) whose binding sites are eliminated. Such a mechanism might provide proliferation-related genes with an expression ...

Critically shortened telomeres make chromosomes susceptible to the instability and widespread cytogenetic alterations that characterize most human cancers. We hypothesized that the very rapid cell proliferation observed in esophageal squamous cell carcinomas might accelerate telomere shortening and chromosomal instability associated with carcinogenesis. We used a number of telomere measurement ...

Telomere lengths are tightly regulated within a narrow range in normal human cells. Previous studies have extensively focused on how short telomeres are extended and have demonstrated that telomerase plays a central role in elongating short telomeres. However, much about the molecular mechanisms of regulating excessively long telomeres is unknown. In this report, we demonstrated that the telome...

BACKGROUND Recent in-vitro observations suggest that left ventricular (LV) contraction is powered by 'stretch activation', an intrinsic mechanism by which the stretching of an activated cardiomyocyte causes delayed force redevelopment. We hypothesized that mechanical dyssynchrony is related to prolonged early systolic stretch that delays the timing of peak segmental shortening. METHODS AND RE...

Toki-shakuyaku-san (TJ-23), a Japanese traditional herbal medicine, has a long history in Asia for the treatment of neurodegenerative, immune, and airway diseases. However, the effect of TJ-23 on heart function has not been elucidated. This study was designed to examine the effect of TJ-23 on ventricular contractile function at the single cardiomyocyte level. Ventricular cardiomyocytes from adu...

Myocardial regional function during acute coronary artery occlusion was studied using ultrasonic dimension gauges in open-chest dogs. Three pairs of 2mm ultrasonic crystals were implanted 1 cm apart near the endocardium in an ischemic segment, a control segment, and a segment at the margin of the ischemic zone. In the ischemic segment, coronary artery occlusion resulted in prompt dyskinesis whi...

Telomeres are specialized regions of repetitive sequences that found at each end of chromosomes and have an important function in protecting the genomic integrity. In the absence of telomerase functioning in the proliferating cells, every mitotic division progressively shorten telomeres which ultimately leads to senescence of the cells. Therefore, shortening of telomeres’ length is recognized a...

The meiotic separation of sister chromatids in mature metaphase II mouse eggs is observed to depend initially on spindle lengthening (Anaphase B), then on microtubule shortening (Anaphase A). Having Anaphase B precede Anaphase A may be the mechanism by which mammalian eggs can generate a haploid chromosome number but without the loss of too much cytoplasm.

A number of neurological diseases are caused by mutations of RNA metabolism-related genes. A complicating issue is that whether under- or overfunction of such genes is responsible for the phenotype. Polyglutamine tract binding protein-1, a causative gene for X-linked mental retardation, is also involved in RNA metabolism, and both mutation and duplication of the gene were reported in human pati...

BACKGROUND Fetal growth restriction (FGR) is associated with global adverse cardiac remodeling in utero and increased cardiovascular mortality in adulthood. Prenatal myocardial deformation has not been evaluated in FGR to date. We aimed to evaluate prenatal cardiac remodeling comprehensively in FGR including myocardial deformation imaging. METHODS AND RESULTS Echocardiography was performed in...