The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is important for multiple developmental processes and tissue maintenance in adults. Consequently, deregulated signaling is involved in a range of human diseases including cancer and developmental defects. A better understanding of the intricate regulatory mechanism and effect of physiological (active) and pathophysiological (hyperactive) WNT signaling is impo...

Hyperglycemia and hypoxia have independent and convergent roles in the development of renal disease. Transforming growth factor-β(1) (TGF-β(1)) is a key cytokine promoting the production of extracellular matrix proteins. The cationic-independent mannose 6-phosphate receptor (CI-M6PR) is a membrane protein that binds M6P-containing proteins. A key role is to activate latent TGF-β(1). PXS25, a no...

Herein we report on the semisynthesis and biological evaluation of β-amino alcohol derivatives of the natural product totarol and other simple aromatic systems. All β-amino alcohol derivatives of totarol exhibited higher antiplasmodial activity than totarol [IC(50): 11.69 μM (K1, chloroquine and multi-drug resistant strain), and 11.78 μM (D10, chloroquine sensitive strain)]-12e was the most act...

Neutrino asymmetry generation from active-sterile neutrino oscillations in the early Universe has different important cosmological effects. We discuss its basic features and present recent results on the borders of the generation for mixing angles sin 2 2θ0 ≤ 10 −7. 1 General conditions for neutrino asymmetry generation Let us consider, from a statistical point of view, a two neutrino mixing ν ...

BACKGROUND β-catenin plays a pivotal role in hair follicle development and hair growth cycle. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify β-catenin-regulated genes in cultured human hair outer root sheath (ORS) cells. METHODS Primary cultured ORS cells were transduced with recombinant adenovirus expressing N-terminal truncated β-catenin (constitutive active form), and β-catenin-regulate...

Binding of a single-chain Fv antibody to Escherichia coli β-galactosidase (β-gal) is known to stabilize the enzyme and activate several inactive point mutants, historically called antibody-mediated enzyme formation mutants. To understand the nature of this activation, we have determined by electron cryo-microscopy the structure of the complex between β-gal and the antibody scFv13R4. Our structu...

We report the development of a novel fluorescent drug sensor from the bacterial drug target TEM-1 β-lactamase through the combined strategy of Val216→Cys216 mutation and fluorophore labelling for in vitro drug screening. The Val216 residue in TEM-1 is replaced with a cysteine residue, and the environment-sensitive fluorophore fluorescein-5-maleimide is specifically attached to the Cys216 residu...