BACKGROUND Geranylgeranylacetone (GGA), an anti-ulcer drug widely used in Japan, has attracted interest because of its various therapeutic effects. Therefore, we investigated the effects of GGA on human hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) in vitro and in a mouse model of liver fibrosis. METHODS LX2, an immortalized human HSC line, was cultured and treated with GGA at concentrations up to 0.5 mM. Af...

Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG), one of the most pathogenic Mycoplasmas, can cause chronic respiratory disease (CRD) in chickens. It has been suggested that micro-ribonucleic acids (miRNAs) are involved in microbial pathogenesis. However, little is known about the roles of miRNAs in MG infection. Previously, we found by deep sequencing that gga-miR-19a was significantly up-regulated in the lungs ...

BACKGROUND Increasing evidence has revealed that humid heat stress (HHS) causes considerable damage to human health. The cardiovascular system has been suggested to be the primary target of heat stress, which results in serious cardiovascular diseases. However, there is still a lack of effective approaches for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases induced by HHS. OBJECTIVE H...

Direct gastric mucosal cell damage mediated by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is involved in the formation of NSAID-induced gastric lesions. We recently suggested that this direct cytotoxicity of NSAIDs is caused by their membrane-permeabilization activity. Geranylgeranylacetone (GGA), a clinically used antiulcer drug, can protect gastric mucosa against lesion formation mediated ...

The exact nature of the hole traps reported deep in the band gap of Cu(2)O has been a topic of vigorous debate, with copper vacancies and oxygen interstitials both having been proposed as the relevant defects. In this article, the electronic structure of acceptor-forming defects in Cu(2)O, namely, copper vacancies and oxygen interstitials, is investigated using generalized gradient approximatio...

Gga proteins represent a newly recognized, evolutionarily conserved protein family with homology to the "ear" domain of the clathrin adaptor AP-1 gamma subunit. Yeast cells contain two Gga proteins, Gga1p and Gga2p, that have been proposed to act in transport between the trans-Golgi network and endosomes. Here we provide genetic and physical evidence that yeast Gga proteins function in trans-Go...

We discuss self-consistently obtained ground-state electronic properties of monolayers of graphene and a number of 'beyond graphene' compounds, including films of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), using the recently proposed strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) meta-generalized gradient approximation (meta-GGA) to the density functional theory. The SCAN meta-GGA results a...

An ab-initio calculation based on full potential linearised augmented plane wave method of density functional theory (DFT) within the localised density approximation (LDA), generalised gradient approximation (GGA) and modified Becke-Johnson (mBJ) for exchange correlation potential is performed to investigate the structural, phase transition and electronic structure of Zinc Sulfide (ZnS). A comp...

The exchange-correlation functionals of the generalized gradient approximation GGA are still the most used for the calculations of the geometry and electronic structure of solids. The PBE functional J. P. Perdew et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865 1996 , the most common of them, provides excellent results in many cases. However, very recently other GGA functionals have been proposed and compete i...

The high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) protein plays an important role in myocardial ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) injury. Geranylgeranylacetone (GGA), a heat shock protein 72 inducer, has been reported to reduce myocardial I/R injury. The aim of this study was to investigate the cardioprotective mechanism of GGA during myocardial I/R injury in rats. Anesthetized male rats were treated once wit...