The aryl hydrocarbon (Ah) receptor has occupied the attention of toxicologists for over two decades. Interest arose from the early observation that this soluble protein played key roles in the adaptive metabolic response to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and in the toxic mechanism of halogenated dioxins and dibenzofurans. More recent investigations have provided a fairly clear picture of the ...

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) have been established to play an essential role in the activation of innate immunity by recognizing specific patterns of microbial components. TLR signaling pathways arise from intracytoplasmic TIR domains, which are conserved among all TLRs. Recent accumulating evidence has demonstrated that TIR domain-containing adaptors, such as MyD88, TIRAP, and TRIF, modulate TLR...

Melanocytes are melanin-producing cells found in skin, hair follicles, eyes, inner ear, bones, heart and brain of humans. They arise from pluripotent neural crest cells and differentiate in response to a complex network of interacting regulatory pathways. Melanins are pigment molecules that are endogenously synthesized by melanocytes. The light absorption of melanin in skin and hair leads to ph...

The response to drought stress is a complicated process involving stress sensing, intracellular signaltransduction, and the execution of a cellular response. Transcription factors play important roles in the signaling pathways including abiotic stress. In the present study a rice NF-YA transcription factor gene was partially characterized following dehydration. Disrupting the gene via a T...

Despite discouraging predictions and statistics for cancer diagnoses and deaths, researchers have developed a new cancer therapeutic agent, the small-molecule kinase inhibitor. Small-molecule kinase inhibitors block kinase signaling and are rapidly moving from investigational status to FDA trials and onto pharmacy and infusion room shelves. Moreover, these therapeutics represent exciting progre...

In a collaborative research initiative, investigators from Dr. Hubank’s laboratory and those from the lab of his colleague Jonathan Ham, M.D., compared the genomic profiles of samples from pediatric medulloblastoma patients with those from normal cerebellar tissues by using Affymetrix Exon arrays. They reported that different splicing patterns exist between the two groups and between different ...

The role of heat shock proteins (HSPs) in protein folding, transport and complex formation has been studied extensively (Bukau and Horwich, 1998; Hartl, 1996). Their roles in signal transduction have been established from observations that Hsp90 and Hsp70 are associated with a number of signaling molecules, including v-Src, Raf1, Akt and steroid receptors (Dittmar et al., 1998; Sato et al., 200...

Arabinogalactan proteins (AGP) are a class of cell surface plant peptidoglycans which have been implicated in root elongation and signal transduction pathways. AGPs function not only as markers of cellular identity but also as signaling molecules, which might initiate signal transduction. Aluminum promotes the elongation of tea (Camellia sinensis L.) roots. Although some mechanisms by which Al ...