Leptin is an adipose tissue derived hormone, which has a crucial role in regulating food intake and energy expenditure. Leptin is also an important metabolic regulator, which maintains glucose and lipid homeostasis. After identification of its influences on body weight and fat mass in leptin deficient obese rodent models, leptin supplementation was used for the treatment of obesity in human. Ho...

It is estimated that 5-10% of women of reproductive age have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). While insulin resistance is not part of the diagnostic criteria for PCOS, its importance in the pathogenesis of PCOS cannot be denied. PCOS is associated with insulin resistance independent of total or fat-free body mass. Post-receptor defects in the action of insulin have been described in PCOS whi...

Ten porphyrin sensitizers with different electron-withdrawing groups derived from the best sensitizer SM315 were investigated by means of the density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT calculations. To this end, major factors affecting the performance of the cell, including light harvesting, electron injection, dye regeneration, and conduction band energy shift are taken into consid...

In this study, we demonstrate that the pervasive xenobiotic methoxyacetic acid and the commonly prescribed anticonvulsant valproic acid, both short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), dramatically increase cellular sensitivity to estrogens, progestins, and other nuclear hormone receptor ligands. These compounds do not mimic endogenous hormones but rather act to enhance the transcriptional efficacy of li...

Photon upconversion via triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA) has promise for overcoming the Shockley–Queisser limit single-junction solar cells by allowing utilization of sub-bandgap photons. Recently, bulk perovskites have been employed as sensitizers in solid-state devices to circumvent poor exciton diffusion previous nanocrystal (NC)-sensitized devices. However, an in-depth understanding under...

The ubiquitin ligase Smad ubiquitination regulatory factor-1 (Smurf1) negatively regulates bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) pathway by ubiquitinating certain signal components for degradation. Thus, it can be an eligible pharmacological target for increasing BMP signal responsiveness. We established a strategy to discover small molecule compounds that block the WW1 domain of Smurf1 from interac...

Characterizing the geometric and electronic structures of individual photoexcited dye molecules in solution is an important step towards understanding the interfacial properties of photo-active electrodes. The broad family of "red sensitizers" based on osmium(II) polypyridyl compounds often undergoes small photo-induced structural changes which are challenging to characterize. In this work, X-r...