Osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH) is a multifactorial disease and is associated with genetic predisposition, and exposure to certain risk factors. In particular, idiopathic ONFH in twins and the clustering of cases in families have indicated that genetic factors are involved. However, the majority of cases of ONFH are sporadic and various studies have demonstrated that differences in the...

Legionella dumoffii is one of the common causes of Legionnaires' disease and is capable of replicating in macrophages. To understand the mechanism of survival within macrophages, transposon mutagenesis was employed to isolate the genes necessary for intracellular growth. We identified four defective mutants after screening 790 transposon insertion mutants. Two transposon insertions were in gene...

BACKGROUND It is increasingly clear that some heat shock proteins (Hsps) play a role in inflammation. Here, we report results showing participation of Hsp60 in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), as indicated by data from both in vivo and in vitro analyses. METHODS AND RESULTS Bronchial biopsies from patients with stable COPD, smoker controls with normal lung fu...

background: leishmania, needs to detoxify the macrophage derived potent peroxides (h2o2). tryparedoxin path­way contains tryparedoxin peroxidase (tsa or tryp). the aim of the study was to detect the full-length gene se­quence and its encoded protein of the lmtryp6 gene (eu251502), and comparison the gene sequence with lmtryp6 (lmjf15.1140), another previously reported member of this gene family...

Protein misfolding and aggregation unify several devastating neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. There are no effective therapeutics for these disorders and none that target the reversal of the aberrant protein misfolding and aggregation that cause disease. Here, I showcase important advances to define, engineer, an...

DafA is encoded by the dnaK operon of Thermus thermophilus and mediates the formation of a highly stable complex between the chaperone DnaK and its co-chaperone DnaJ under normal growth conditions. DafA(Tth) contains 87 amino acid residues and is the only member of the DnaK(Tth) chaperone system for which no corresponding protein has yet been identified in other organisms and whose particular f...

The purpose of this article is to provide an introductory overview of stress-gene transcription in archaea for those unfamiliar with the topic. Archaea are diverse and inhabit disparate ecosystems (very cold or hot, temperate, etc.). The study of their stress genes should reveal a variety of strategies for cell survival and suggest manifold applications. Survival relies on the mechanisms of tra...

In light of increasing sea surface temperatures, quantifying the expression of stressinducible genes in coastal organisms is imperative to identify early biomarkers of thermal stress. In the present study we developed a quantitative PCR (qPCR) assay to test the molecular response to heat stress in the Great Barrier Reef sponge Rhopaloeides odorabile. Suitable reference genes (coding for α-tubul...

objective(s): non-syndromic sensorineural hearing loss (nshl) is a common disorder affecting approximately 1 in 500 newborns. this type of hearing loss is extremely heterogeneous and includes over 100 loci. mutations in the gjb2 gene have been implicated in about half of autosomal recessive nshl (arnshl) cases, making this the most common cause of arnshl. for the latter form of deafness, most f...