Meiotic DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) are indicated at leptotene by the phosphorylated form of histone H2AX (gamma-H2AX). In contrast to previous studies, we identified on both zygotene and pachytene chromosomes two distinct types of gamma-H2AX foci: multiple small (S) foci located along autosomal synaptonemal complexes (SCs) and larger signals on chromatin loops (L-foci). The S-foci number g...

Valerian is widely used as a traditional medicine to improve the quality of sleep due to interaction of several active components with the γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) A receptor (GABA(A)R) system. Recently, activation of GABA signaling in stem cells has been reported to suppress cell cycle progression in vivo. Furthermore, possible inhibitory effects of GABA(A)R agonists on hepatocarcinogenesis ...

CDK-cyclin complexes regulate centriole duplication and microtubule nucleation at specific cell cycle stages, although their exact roles in these processes remain unclear. As the activities of CDK-cyclins are themselves positively regulated by CDC25 phosphatases, we investigated the role of centrosomal CDC25B during interphase. We report that overexpression of CDC25B, as is commonly found in hu...

Cellular senescence is an irreversible state of proliferation arrest evoked by a myriad of stresses including oncogene activation, telomere shortening/dysfunction and genotoxic insults. It has been associated with tumor activation, immune suppression and aging, owing to the secretion of proinflammatory mediators. The bacterial genotoxin colibactin, encoded by the pks genomic island is frequentl...

Unfolded protein response (UPR) is triggered by the accumulation of unfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which is accomplished by a dramatic induction of genes encoding ER chaperones. Activation of these genes involves their rapid transcription by Hac1p, encoded by the HAC1 precursor transcript harboring an intron and a bipartite element (3'-BE) in the 3'-UTR. ER stress facilita...

Mutation of LKB1 is the key molecular event underlying Peutz-Jeghers syndrome, a dominantly inherited condition characterized by a predisposition to a range of malignancies, including those of the reproductive system. We report here the use of a Cre-LoxP strategy to directly address the role of Lkb1 in prostate neoplasia. Recombination of a LoxP-flanked Lkb1 allele within all four murine prosta...

Expression of immediate early genes (IEG) is induced in brain neurons by synaptic activity and is frequently used to monitor neuronal activation. This unit describes a technique (cellular compartment analysis of temporal activity by fluorescence in situ hybridization or catFISH) that uses fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) of IEG RNAs to slide-mounted tissue sections, and confocal micros...

Given the increasing number of neuroimaging publications, the automated knowledge extraction on brain-behavior associations by quantitative meta-analyses has become a highly important and rapidly growing field of research. Among several methods to perform coordinate-based neuroimaging meta-analyses, Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) has been widely adopted. In this paper, we addressed two ...

BACKGROUNDS Idiopathic ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) originating from the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) sometimes require catheter ablation from the endocardial and epicardial sides for their elimination, suggesting the presence of intramural VA foci. This study investigated the efficacy of sequential and simultaneous unipolar radiofrequency catheter ablation from the endocardial and ep...