The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) in drug disposition in skin. The distribution of P-gp substrates (rhodamine 123 and itraconazole) to the skin after administration from the epidermal side was lower in P-gp gene knockout (mdr1a/1b(-/-)) mice than that in wild-type mice. Coadministration of propranolol, a P-gp inhibitor, decreased the distribut...

A Bacillus subtilis mutant strain overexpressing surfactin biosynthetic genes was previously constructed. In order to further increase the production of this biosurfactant, our hypothesis is that the surfactin precursors, especially leucine, must be overproduced. We present a three step approach for leucine overproduction directed by methods from computational biology. Firstly, we develop a new...

Directional sensing, a process in which cells convert an external chemical gradient into internal signaling events, is essential in chemotaxis. We previously showed that a Rho GTPase, RacE, regulates gradient sensing in Dictyostelium cells. Here, using affinity purification and mass spectrometry, we identify a novel RacE-binding protein, GflB, which contains a Ras GEF domain and a Rho GAP domai...

Transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN) and zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) genome editing technology enables site directed engineering of the genome. Here we demonstrate for the first time that both TALEN and ZFN injected directly into pig zygotes can produce live genome edited pigs. Monoallelic as well as heterozygous and homozygous biallelic events were identified, significantly br...

Contact hypersensitivity (CHS), a dendritic-cell (DC)-dependent, T-cell-mediated skin immune response to reactive haptens, has been a subject of intense research for many years. The molecular mechanisms underlying CHS are complicated and are not fully understood. During the past few years, varieties of gene-targeted knockout mice have been used in the study of CHS. Such studies have contributed...

The human brain comprises more than 100 billion neurons, each of which has an elaborate shape and a complex pattern of connections. To untangle this complexity, it is often useful to visualize one neuron at a time. Mosaic analysis with double markers (MADM) is a genetic method for labeling and manipulating individual neurons. This method was developed in mice and it allows simultaneous labeling...

CD3gamma and CD3delta are two highly related components of the T cell receptor (TCR)-CD3 complex which is essential for the assembly and signal transduction of the T cell receptor on mature T cells. In gene knockout mice deficient in either CD3delta or CD3gamma, early thymic development mediated by pre-TCR was either undisturbed or severely blocked, respectively, and small numbers of TCR-alphab...

Glucokinase (GCK) is the rate-limiting enzyme of liver glucose metabolism. Through protein-protein interactions, glucokinase regulatory protein (GCKR) post-transcriptionally regulates GCK function in the liver, and causes its nuclear localization. However the role of GCK in regulating GCKR localization is unknown. In the present study, using in vitro and in vivo models, we examined the levels o...

We have systematically made a set of precisely defined, single-gene deletions of all nonessential genes in Escherichia coli K-12. Open-reading frame coding regions were replaced with a kanamycin cassette flanked by FLP recognition target sites by using a one-step method for inactivation of chromosomal genes and primers designed to create in-frame deletions upon excision of the resistance casset...

Microbial strains optimization for the overproduction of desired phenotype has been a popular topic in recent years. The strains can be optimized through several techniques in the field of genetic engineering. Gene knockout is a genetic engineering technique that can engineer the metabolism of microbial cells with the objective to obtain desirable phenotypes. However, the complexities of the me...