Expression of heterologous proteins in adult mammalian neurons is a valuable technique for the study of neuronal function. The post-mitotic nature of mature neurons prevents effective DNA transfection using simple, cationic lipid-based methods. Adequate heterologous protein expression is often only achievable using complex techniques that, in many cases, are associated with substantial toxicity...

Biliary tract carcinoma is a relatively rare tumor with a poor prognosis. Surgical resection is the only potential cure. However, the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents is disappointing in advanced or recurrent cases. Gemcitabine (GEM) appears to be one of the most promising chemotherapeutic agents in biliary tract carcinoma, and ribonucleotide reductase subunit M1 (RRM1) plays an important ro...

For more than 20 years, reverse pharmacology has been the preeminent strategy to discover the activating ligands of orphan G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The onset of a reverse pharmacology assay is the cloning and subsequent transfection of a GPCR of interest in a cellular expression system. The heterologous expressed receptor is then challenged with a compound library of candidate ligan...

Nonviral gene delivery methods are advantageous over viral vectors in terms of safety, cost, and flexibility in design and application, but suffer from lower gene transfer efficiency. In addition to modifications to nucleic acid design and nonviral carriers, new tools are sought to enhance transfection. Priming is the pharmacological modulation of transfection efficiency and transgene expressio...

sperm mediated gene transfer can be an inexpensive and simple method in animal transgenesis; however its efficiency is poor, mainly due to the spermatozoa’s lesser uptake of exogenous dna. in the present study, the effects of lipofection and other augmentation techniques, such as sperm freezing and spermatozoa treatment with triton x100 and dmso, on exogenous dna uptake by sheep spermatozoa and...

Objective(s): Impairment of nerve cells of brain induced by hypoxia results in energy-deprivation and dysfunction, which accompanies with neurons apoptosis. Improving function of nerve cells is important for treating cerebral anoxia. This study aimed to investigate the role of Quercetin (Quer) in hypoxia-induced injury of pheochromocytoma (PC-12) cells. Materials and Methods: PC-12 cells were c...

Background: Semaphorin-3A (Sema3A), as a secreted semaphorin, is an immune modulator molecule participating in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) modulate the target-gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. It has been proposed that miRNAs may be crucial to the modulation of the function of semaphorins. Previous findings have proven that miR-497-5p is upregula...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to investigate the relationship between miR-506 and proliferation and migration of breast cancer cells. MATERIAL AND METHODS MiR-506 mimics, inhibitor, and negative control (NC) were transfected into MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. Cell proliferation, cell counting, colony formation assay, and Transwell assay were applied to evaluate the proliferation and migration...

Active transcriptional repression has been characterized as a function of many regulatory factors. It facilitates combinatorial regulation of gene expression by allowing repressors to be dominant over activators under certain conditions. Here, we show that the Engrailed protein uses two distinct mechanisms to repress transcription. One activity is predominant under normal transient transfection...