The organization of the human metallothionein (MT) gene family is more complex than the commonly used mouse and rat models. The human MTs are encoded by a family of genes consisting of 10 functional and 7 nonfunctional MT isoforms. One objective of this study was to determine if the accumulation of MT protein in cultures of human proximal tubule (HPT) cells exposed to metals is similar to that ...

BACKGROUND We investigated the targeting of microtubules (MT) and F-actin cytoskeleton (AC) of the human pathogenic yeast Cryptococcus neoformans with agents for cancer therapy, in order to examine whether this yeast cytoskeleton could become a new antifungal target for the inhibition of cell division. METHODS Cells treated with 10 cytoskeleton inhibitors in yeast extract peptone dextrose med...

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) uses a variety of chemokine receptors as coreceptors for virus entry, and the ability of the virus to be neutralized by antibody may depend on which coreceptors are used. In particular, laboratory-adapted variants of the virus that use CXCR4 as a coreceptor are highly sensitive to neutralization by sera from HIV-1-infected individuals, whereas primary...

In an attempt to isolate multipotent stem cells from foreskin in a long-term culture, we encountered an interesting phenomenon which was the conversion of the fibroblast dominant condition to epithelial-like tissue formation. However, the basic mechanism(s) which may be involved in this conversion is not clear. This study was designed to evaluate the cells protein secretion activity and examine...

Previous studies from this laboratory have implicated the expression of the third isoform of metallothionein (MT-3) in the maintenance of proximal tubular vectorial active ion transport. It was shown that HK-2 cells have no expression of MT-3 and do not form domes in culture; whereas, the human proximal tubular (HPT) cells and HK-2 cells stably transfected with MT-3 [HK-2(MT-3)] form these stru...

developing a culture system for preantral follicles has important biotechnological implications due to the potential to produce a large number of oocytes for embryo production and transfer. to accomplish this goal, the present study was aimed to culture preantral follicles in the presence of different media, sera and fsh concentrations. six-week-old preantral follicles (95 ± 5 µm) were cultured...

abstract background: improvements in culture media formulations have led to an increase in the ability of sheep embryo in culture throughout the preimplantation period. objective: this study was carried out to evaluate the effects of various concentrations of mem vitamins during in vitro maturation of sheep oocytes and subsequent embryo development. materials and methods: sheep ovaries were col...

This paper presents a comparison between batch and three different sets of fed batch fermentations forrhamnolipid production by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The batch run was performed with 500 ml of culturemedium having the initial glycerol and sodium nitrate concentrations of 30 and 8.3 g/l, respectively. For a fedbatch run with nitrogen source in feed, 250 ml of the nitrogen exc...