Adipocyte differentiation is a key process implicated in the pathogenesis of obesity and insulin resistance. Its regulation is triggered by a cascade of transcription factors, including the CCAAT/enhancer binding proteins (C/EBPs) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPARgamma). Growth factors such as transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1) are known to inhibit adipocyte d...

The premature GDF/PDF/MIC-1 protein consists of 308 amino acids that contain a 29 amino acid signal peptide, a 167 amino acid propeptide, and a 112 amino acid mature protein. The mature protein is secreted as a homodimer linked by disulfide bonds and is released from the propeptide following intracellular cleavage at RXXR furine-like cleavage site. The mature peptide of GDF-1/MIC-1 contains two...

Objective(s): The present day challenge is how to obtain germ cells from stem cells to treat patients with cancer and infertility. Much more efforts have been made to develop a procedure for attaining germ cells in vitro. Recently, human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (HUMSCs) have been introduced with higher efficacy for differentiation. In this work, we tried to explore the eff...

A simple observational approach for studying the response of the diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella (L.), to environmental gradients including latitude, insecticide application and climate change, was developed in this study. Insecticide resistance and carboxylesterase frequency in DBM collected in 1979/1980 and 1986/1987 were selected as two ecological variables for analysing and defi...

The in vitro process of chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells for tissue engineering has been shown to require three-dimensional culture along with the addition of differentiation factors to the culture medium. In general, this leads to a phenotype lacking some of the cardinal features of native articular chondrocytes and their extracellular matrix. The factors used vary, but r...

Coronaviruses (CoV) have recently emerged as potentially serious pathogens that can cause significant human morbidity and death. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV was identified as the etiologic agent of the 2002-2003 international SARS outbreak. Yet, how SARS evades innate immune responses to cause human disease remains poorly understood. In this study, we show that a protein en...

The fecundity in sheep has been much interested for producers due to its economical importance. Growth differentiation factor 9 (GDF9) is an autosomal gene with over dominance effect for twosingle nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs), which resulted in sterility in homozygote mutant ewes and additive effect for three SNPs, without showing sterility event. In the present study, DNA was extracted from ...

Background Ghezel sheep are highly prolific and one of the local sheep breeds in Iran and Turkey. Growth differentiation factor-9 (GDF9) gene has been found to be essential for growth and differentiation of early ovarian follicles. Novel mutations in GDF9 have been associated with increased ovulation rates and high litter sizes in heterozygous carriers. Therefore, fecundity gene for GDF9 (FecGH...

Prolactin (PRL) gene expression in three strains of GH cells (rat pituitary tumor cells) has been quantitated by measurement of: (a) intracellular and extracellular PRL, (b) cytoplasmic translatable PRL-specific mRNA (mRNAPRL), and (c) molecular hybridization of cytoplasmic poly(A) RNA to cDNAPRL (DNA complementary to mRNAPRL). Three GH cell lines utilized in this investigation were a PRL-produ...