Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) are crucial for homeostasis (tissue remodelling and repair, bone growth, wound healing, etc.) and pathology (metastasis, angiogenesis, aneurysm rupture, etc.). Upregulated MMPs from macrophages are thus a two-edged sword, playing both defensive and aggressive roles. The related family of ADAMs (a disintegrin and a metalloproteinase) is sometimes overlooked becaus...

Background: One important reproductive characteristic of Mammals is the production of milk to nurse the neonate. In order to better understand the evolution of milk we have investigated gene expression in milk cells from monotremes which are the most ancient representative of the mammalian lineage. Materials and Methods: Using a milk cell cDNA sequencing approach we characterise milk protein se...

Background: The expression of bio-therapeutic proteins in mammalian cells, such as CHO, attains high homogeneity related to post-translational modifications. Although CHO remains the most popular cell line for bestselling biotherapeutic proteins on the market, there are still drawbacks such as expensive culture media, long time line, and high drug cost. Recently, researches on a novel Leishmani...

lactoferrin (lf) is an iron-binding multi-functional glycoprotein which has numerous physiological functions such as iron transportation, anti-microbial activity and immune response. in this study, different in silico approaches were exploited to investigate lf protein properties in a number of mammalian species. results showed that the iron-binding site, dna and rna-binding sites, signal pepti...

Cryopreservation is a key technology in biology and clinical practice. This paper presents a digital microfluidic device that automates sample preparation for mammalian embryo vitrification. Individual micro droplets manipulated on the microfluidic device were used as micro-vessels to transport a single mouse embryo through a complete vitrification procedure. Advantages of this approach, compar...

Treatment of mouse L 929 cells in cell culture with mouse interferon, prior to infection with reovirus type 3, decreased the amount of virus progeny formed. In infected, interferon-treated cells less reovirus specified double-stranded RNA (ds reoRNA) and single-stranded RNA accumulated than in infected control cells and the rate of ds reoRNA accumulation was inversely related to the concentrati...

Fixed mammalian mitotic chromosomes, when stained with a variety of sensitive, sulphydryl-specific fluorochromes directly or following reduction of disulphide groups, show uniform fluorescence. Thus sulphydryl and disulphide groups are uniformly distributed along the length of the chromosomes, and do not show patterns related to chromosome bands. Performance of G- or C-banding procedures oxidiz...

An approach to organ cryopreservation, namely, vitrification has been review ed by FAHY et al.1). RALL and FAHY2) obtained some promissing results using 8-cell mouse embryos indicating the feasibility of obtaining high survival following rapid freezing by vitrification. However, there have been only a preliminary report2) on the feasibility of obtaining offspring by the vitrification method. Th...

Steve Rozen, Wesley C. Warren, George Weinstock, Stephen J. O’Brien, Richard A. Gibbs, Richard K. Wilson, David C. Page 1 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Whitehead Institute, and Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 2 Genome Sequencing Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri 63108 3 Human Genome Sequencing Cen...