How the brain's antioxidant defenses adapt to changing demand is incompletely understood. Here we show that synaptic activity is coupled, via the NMDA receptor (NMDAR), to control of the glutathione antioxidant system. This tunes antioxidant capacity to reflect the elevated needs of an active neuron, guards against future increased demand and maintains redox balance in the brain. This control i...

All classic, non-surgical anticancer approaches like chemotherapy, radiotherapy or photodynamic therapy kill cancer cells by inducing severe oxidative stress. Even tough chemo- and radiotherapy are still a gold standard in cancer treatment, the identification of non-toxic compounds that enhance their selectivity, would allow for lowering their doses, reduce side effects and risk of second cance...

Markedly decreased plasma cystine and cysteine concentrations have been found in HIV-infected patients at all stages of the disease and in SIV-infected rhesus macaques. The elevated glutamate levels found in the same patients aggravate the cysteine deficiency by inhibiting the membrane transport activity for cystine. The intact immune system appears to require a delicate balance between pro-oxi...

In cooperatively breeding species, helping close relatives may provide important fitness benefits. However, helping can be energetically expensive and may result in increased generation of reactive oxygen species. Consequently, an oxidant/antioxidant imbalance can lead to higher oxidative stress susceptibility. Given the potential costs of helping, it may be that only individuals with a suffici...

Temperature is well known to affect many biological and ecological traits, especially in ectotherms. From a physiological point of view, temperature is also positively correlated to metabolism and is often associated with an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. It has recently been suggested that ROS play a role in lifespan and resource allocation. However, only a few authors h...

The redox state, like the pH or the osmotic pressure, represents chemical characteristics of the intracellular environment. The intracellular redox homeostasis can be disturbed by the installation of the “oxidative stress”, which manifests itself through the dysregulation of the balance between the systems that produce oxidant agents and the antioxidant defense mechanisms (the redox balance). E...

The Syrian hamster Harderian gland exhibits sexually dimorphic porphyrin biosynthesis, wherein the female glands display an extraordinarily high concentration of porphyrins. Damage derived from this production of porphyrins, mediated by reactive oxygen species, causes the glands to develop autophagic processes, which culminate in detachment-derived cell death; these cells normally play a centra...