Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive cancer with a dismal outcome largely due to metastasis and postsurgical recurrence. Thus, the inhibition of invasion and metastasis is of great importance in its therapies. Medicinal plants or ethnopharmacology used in folklore medicine continue to be an important source of discovery and development of novel or potential therapeutic agents for tre...

Hammerhead ribozymes catalyze self-cleavage of oligomeric RNAs generated in replication of certain viroid and viroid-like RNAs. Previous studies have defined a catalytic core conserved in most natural hammerheads, but it is still unknown why some present deviations from the consensus. We have addressed this issue in chrysanthemum chlorotic mottle viroid (CChMVd), whose (+) hammerhead has an ext...

Iron (Fe) deficiency can represent a serious constraint on crop growth and productivity. A number of members of the bHLH transcription factor family are known to be involved in the plant Fe deficiency response. Plants have evolved two distinct uptake strategies when challenged by Fe deficiency: dicotyledonous and non-graminaceous species rely mostly on a reduction strategy regulated by bHLH tra...

BACKGROUND Eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) plays an important role in plant virus infection as well as the regulation of gene translation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here, we describe the isolation of a cDNA encoding CmeIF(iso)4E (GenBank accession no. JQ904592), an isoform of eIF4E from chrysanthemum, using RACE PCR. We used the CmeIF(iso)4E cDNA for expression profil...