Electrophile and free radical detoxifying enzymes including NAD(P)H:quinine oxidoreductase 1 (Nqo1) play an important role in the defense system by enhancing cellular antioxidant capacity. Chemopreventive efficacy of 3H-1,2-dithiole-3-thione (D3T) is mediated through activation of the transcription factor Nrf2 and subsequent elevation of detoxifying enzymes. In the present study, we have invest...

An improved version of the Cascade-Exciton Model (CEM) of nuclear reactions implemented in the codes CEM2k and the Los Alamos version of the Quark-Gluon String Model (LAQGSM) has been developed recently at LANL to describe reactions induced by particles and nuclei at energies up to hundreds of GeV/nucleon for a number of applications. We present several improvements to the intranuclear cascade ...

The SMRT (silencing mediator of retinoic acid and thyroid hormone receptor) corepressor participates in the repression of target gene expression by a variety of transcription factors, including the nuclear hormone receptors, promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger protein, and B-cell leukemia protein 6. The ability of SMRT to associate with these transcription factors and thereby to mediate repressi...

Duchenne muscular dystrophy muscles undergo increased oxidative stress and altered calcium homeostasis, which contribute to myofiber loss by trigging both necrosis and apoptosis. Here, we asked whether treatment with free radical scavengers could improve the dystrophic pattern of mdx muscles. Five-week-old mdx mice were treated for 2 weeks with alpha-lipoic acid/l-carnitine. This treatment decr...

Tissue factor (TF) is the initiator of coagulation cascade, constitutively expressed in subendothelial cells such as vascular smooth muscle and initiating rapid when vessel damaged. TF has been shown to be involved development progression atherosclerosis. Arsenic, an environmental pollutant, related atherosclerosis, although pathogenic mechanisms are not fully elucidated. In present study, we i...

The ERK5 cascade is a MAPK pathway that transmits both mitogenic and stress signals, yet its mechanism of activation is not fully understood. Using intracellular calcium modifiers, we found that ERK5 activation by EGF is inhibited both by the depletion and elevation of intracellular calcium levels. This calcium effect was found to occur upstream of MEKK2, which is the MAP3K of the ERK5 cascade....

We introduce a Monte Carlo space-time model for high-energy collisions with nuclei, involving the dynamical interplay of perturbative QCD parton production and evolution, with non-perturbative parton-cluster formation and ‘afterburner’ cascading of formed pre-hadronic clusters plus hadron excitations. This approach allows us to trace the space-time history of parton and hadron degrees of freedo...

Phenotypic switch of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) is characterized by increased expressions of VSMC synthetic markers and decreased levels of VSMC contractile markers, which is an important step for VSMC proliferation and migration during the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases including atherosclerosis. Chicoric acid (CA) is identified to exert powerful cardiovascula...