PURPOSE Downregulation of miR-125b-1 is associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. In this work we investigated the effect of histone modifications on the regulation of this gene promoter. METHODS AND RESULTS We evaluated the enrichment of two histone modifications involved in gene repression, H3K9me3 and H3K27me3, on the miR-125b-1 promoter in two breast cancer cell lines, MCF...

Paclitaxel (Taxol)-induced cell death requires the intrinsic cell death pathway, but the specific participants and the precise mechanisms are poorly understood. Previous studies indicate that a BH3-only protein BIM (BCL-2 Interacting Mediator of cell death) plays a role in paclitaxel-induced apoptosis. We show here that BIM is dispensable in apoptosis with paclitaxel treatment using bim(-/-) ME...

Recent data on the plasma membrane (PM)-located LRR-RLKs (for Leu-rich repeat receptor-like kinases) BRI1 (for brassinosteroid insensitive 1) and the coreceptors BAK1 (for BRI1-associated kinase 1) and SERK1 (for somatic embryogenesis receptor-like kinase 1) that participate in the perception of brassinosteroids (BRs) suggest that they are organized into heterooligomeric protein complexes. Othe...

Abstract Background Brassinosteroid (BR) signaling regulates plant growth and development in concert with other pathways. Although many genes have been identified that play a role BR signaling, the biological functional consequences of disrupting those key still require detailed investigation. Results Here we performed phenotypic transcriptomic comparisons A. thaliana lines carrying loss-of-fun...

The cellulose binding elicitor lectin (CBEL) of the genus Phytophthora induces necrosis and immune responses in several plant species, including Arabidopsis thaliana. However, the role of CBEL-induced responses in the outcome of the interaction is still unclear. This study shows that some of CBEL-induced defence responses, but not necrosis, required the receptor-like kinase BAK1, a general regu...