background: in gene therapy, the use of rna molecules as therapeutic agents has shown advantages over plasmid dna, including higher levels of safety. however, transient nature of rna has been a major obstacle in application of rna in gene therapy. methods: here, we used the internal ribosomal entry site of encephalomyocarditis virus and the 3’ non-translated region of poliovirus to design an en...

genetic epidemiological studies strongly suggest that additive and interactive genes, each with small effects, mediate the genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia. with the human genome working draft at hand, candidate gene (and ultimately large-scale genome-wide) association studies are gaining renewed interest in the effort to unravel the complex genetics of schizophrenia. linkage and fine ma...

background: several influential factors such as transcription factors and intracellular signaling components are involved in differentiation of stem cells into a specific lineage. p15 and p16 proteins are among these factors. accumulating evidences has introduced the epigenetic as a master regulator of these factors during lineage specification. the main objective of this study is to determine ...

conclusions this is the first report of expression of cmv cp gene in iran, which is important for the preparation of anti-cmv antibody and paving the way for the use of the virus coat protein as a nanomaterial. results the identity of the expressed protein was confirmed by immunoassays such as western blot, dot-immunobinding assay (diba) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa) by the use ...

background: zinc (zn) as an important trace element is essential for testicular development and spermatogenesis. molecular mechanism of zn action in the reproductive system may be related to metal binding low-molecular weight proteins, metallothioneins (mt). our objective was to determine the effect of zn on two important isoforms of mt, mt1m and mt1g genes expression on testicular sertoli cell...

objective(s):  apoptosis is a tightly regulated process and plays a crucial role in autoimmune diseases. because abnormalities in apoptosis are considered to be involved in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (sle), in present study we studied the apoptosis in t lymphocytes from iranian sle patientsat protein and gene expression levels for some molecules which are involved in apopt...

extracellular ca 2+ concentration ([ca2+]o) may be one of the factors affecting atrial natriuretic factor (anf) release. in the previous studies, there are opposite reports about the effect of [ca2+]o on anf secretion. therefore, the effect of [ca2+]o depletion on anf secretion and gene expression was studied in the present research. isolated right atria from rats were perfused for 6 and 2 hour...

background: oct4b1, a novel variant of oct4, is expressed in cancer cell lines and tissues. based on our previous reports, oct4b1 appears to have a crucial role in regulating apoptosis as well as stress response [heat shock proteins (hsps)] pathways. the aim of the present study was to determine the effects of oct4b1 silencing on the expression of high molecular weight hsps in three different h...

retinal pigment epithelium is responsible for maintaining the structural integrity of the retina by an efficient defense against free radicals, photo-oxidative exposure and light energy. for this purpose the main rpe line of defense is melanosomes. melanin content of retinal pigment epithelium cells in adults and neonates reveals remarkable variations. in the current study we compared melanogen...