Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by loss of dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra. The hallmark of PD is the appearance of neuronal protein aggregations known as Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, of which α-synuclein forms a major component. Familial PD is rare and is associated with missense mutations of the SNCA gene or increases in gene copy num...

SpyTag can spontaneously form a covalent isopeptide bond with its protein partner SpyCatcher. Firefly luciferase from Photinus pyralis was cyclized in vivo by fusing SpyCatcher at the N terminus and SpyTag at the C terminus. Circular LUC was more thermostable and alkali-tolerant than the wild type, without compromising the specific activity. Structural analysis indicated that the cyclized LUC i...

Muscle wasting associated with chronic diseases has been linked to decreased expression of PGC-1α and overexpression of PGC-1α counters muscle loss. CREB, in conjunction with the CREB-regulated transcription coactivator (CRTC2), is a positive modulator of PGC-1α transcription. We previously reported that PGC-1α expression is decreased in skeletal muscle of diabetic rats despite a high level of ...

The treatment paradigms for head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC) are changing due to the emergence of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated tumors possessing distinct molecular profiles and responses to therapy. Although patients with HNSCCs are often treated with radiotherapy, preclinical models are limited by the ability to deliver precise radiation to orthotopic tumors and to monitor t...

Combination therapy of adenoviral gene therapy and a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor is important due to the enhancing effect of HDAC inhibitors on adenoviral transduction and transcription. However, contradictory results have been reported on the effect of combination of CRAd (conditionally replicating adenovirus) and HDAC inhibitors. This study was designed to investigate the interaction...

Following a pathogenic attack, plants are able to mount a defense response with the coordinated activation of a battery of defense-related genes. In this study we have characterized the mode of expression of the P69B and P69C genes from tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.), which encodes two closely related subtilisin-like proteases associated with the defense response. We have compared the m...

Alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 (AlHV-1), carried by wildebeest asymptomatically, causes malignant catarrhal fever (WD-MCF) when cross-species transmitted to a variety of susceptible species of the Artiodactyla order. Experimentally, WD-MCF can be reproduced in rabbits. WD-MCF is described as a combination of lymphoproliferation and degenerative lesions in virtually all organs and is caused by unknow...

p21CIP1/WAF1 is a p53-target gene in response to cellular DNA damage. Here we report the development of a fish cell biosensor system for high throughput genotoxicity detection of new drugs, by stably integrating two reporter plasmids of pGL3-p21-luc (human p21 promoter linked to firefly luciferase) and pRL-CMV-luc (CMV promoter linked to Renilla luciferase) into marine flatfish flounder gill (F...

BACKGROUND The multicellular green alga Volvox carteri represents an attractive model system to study various aspects of multicellularity like cellular differentiation, morphogenesis, epithelial folding and ECM biogenesis. However, functional and molecular analyses of such processes require a wide array of molecular tools for genetic engineering. So far there are only a limited number of molecu...

Fetal progenitor cells enter the maternal circulation during pregnancy and can persist for decades. We aimed to determine the role of these cells in tissue inflammation during pregnancy. WT female mice were mated to males transgenic for the EGFP (ubiquitous) or the luciferase gene controlled by the VEGF receptor 2 (VEGFR2; V-Luc) promoter. A contact hypersensitivity reaction was triggered durin...