The excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix of hepatic fibrosis is positively correlated with tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP1). Here we aimed to investigate whether TIMP1 may be down-reg...
Authors: Dong Jia, Yi-Ran Ni, Yan-Qiong Zhang, Chun Rao, Jun Hou, He-Qing Tang, Chang-Bai Liu and Jiang-Feng Wu
Lymphopenia promotes naïve T-cell homeostatic proliferation and adoptive effector T-cell survival and memory formation. IL-7 plays a critical role in homeostatic proliferation, survival and memory formation of...
Authors: Aizhang Xu, Kalpana Kalyanasundaram Bhanumathy, Jie Wu, Zhenmin Ye, Andrew Freywald, Scot C. Leary, Rongxiu Li and Jim Xiang
Maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY), one of the specific types of diabetes mellitus, is a monogenetic disorder characterized by an autosomal dominant (AD) inheritance and β-cell dysfunction. To study a...
Authors: Jing Yang, Feng Jiang, Hui Guo, Thadimacca Soniya, Chun-xia Yan, Zhu-fang Tian and Bing-yin Shi
There is a suspected link between Brazilian babies born with microcephaly and Zika virus (ZIKV) infection. However, little is know about the brain cell targets and the mechanisms that Zika virus may cause micr...
Two research groups led by Dr. Bin Gao of National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, MD, USA and Dr. Keji Zhao of National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Ins...
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), a third member of gasotransmitter family along with nitric oxide and carbon monoxide, generated from mainly catalyzed by cystathionine-lyase, possesses important functions in the cardiovas...
Authors: Lina Li, Meixiu Li, Youyou Li, Weiming Sun, Yuehong Wang, Shuzhi Bai, Hongxia Li, Bo Wu, Guangdong Yang, Rui Wang, Lingyun Wu, Hongzhu Li and Changing Xu
The mitochondria are double membrane-bound organelles found in most eukaryotic cells. They generate most of the cell’s energy supply of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylati...
Authors: Sangbin Lim, Kelly R. Smith, Ssang-Taek Steve Lim, Rong Tian, Jianrong Lu and Ming Tan
Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most commonly diagnosed and fatal cancer worldwide. Sclerostin domain containing protein 1 (SOSTDC1) has been found to be tumor-suppressive in several types of cancers...
Authors: Lei Liu, Shanshan Wu, Yi Yang, Junchao Cai, Xun Zhu, Jueheng Wu, Mengfeng Li and Hongyu Guan
As a consequence of a reprogrammed metabolism, cancer cells are dependent on the amino acid l-glutamine for their survival, a phenomenon that currently forms the basis for the generation of new, cancer-specific t...
Authors: Abdelmuhsen Abusneina and Eric R. Gauthier
The prognosis of acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) is really dismal, which urges for development of novel treatment. Baicalein is one type of flavonoids extracted from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (Huang Q...
Authors: Chunjie Yu, Jiancheng Zeng, Zhenzhen Yan, Zi Ma, Shangqin Liu and Zan Huang
The RNA guided CRISPR/Cas9 nucleases have been proven to be effective for gene disruption in various animal models including Xenopus tropicalis. The neural crest (NC) is a transient cell population during embryon...
Authors: Zhongzhen Liu, Tina Tsz Kwan Cheng, Zhaoying Shi, Ziran Liu, Yong Lei, Chengdong Wang, Weili Shi, Xiongfeng Chen, Xufeng Qi, Dongqing Cai, Bo Feng, Yi Deng, Yonglong Chen and Hui Zhao
Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) is the causative agent of varicella and zoster. The immediate-early protein, IE62 is the predominant VZ virion tegument protein, transactivating the expression of all kinetic class...
Authors: Chia-Chi Ku, Yi-Hsuan Chang, Yun Chien and Tsung-Lin Lee
Exposure of the American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus tadpoles to low temperature affects many biological processes including lipid metabolism and the thyroid hormone (TH) signaling pathway, resulting in arre...
Authors: Shunsuke Suzuki, Koichiro Awai, Akinori Ishihara and Kiyoshi Yamauchi
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the most common human head and neck cancers with high incidence in Southern China, Southeast Asia and North Africa. Because of its nonspecific symptoms, the early diagn...
Authors: Yuanwei Guo, Weihao Luo, Zheng Hu, Jia Li, Xiaojie Li, Huiqiu Cao, Jun Li, Bo Wen, Jian Zhang, Hao Cheng, Wangyuan Guo, Tan Tan and Dixian Luo
Human Papillomavirus is responsible for over 99 % of cervical cancers and is associated with cancers of the head and neck. The currently available prophylactic vaccines against HPV do not generate therapeutic ...
Authors: Ming-Chieh Yang, Andrew Yang, Jin Qiu, Benjamin Yang, Liangmei He, Ya-Chea Tsai, Jessica Jeang, T.-C. Wu and Chien-Fu Hung
Human papillomavirus (HPV) has been identified as the primary etiologic factor of cervical cancer as well as subsets of anogenital and oropharyngeal cancers. The two HPV viral oncoproteins, E6 and E7, are uniq...
Authors: Shiwen Peng, Jin Qiu, Andrew Yang, Benjamin Yang, Jessica Jeang, Joshua W. Wang, Yung-Nien Chang, Cory Brayton, Richard B. S. Roden, Chien-Fu Hung and T.-C. Wu
Transcriptional activation is a complex, multistage process implemented by hundreds of proteins. Many transcriptional proteins are organized into coactivator complexes, which participate in transcription regul...
Authors: Aleksey N. Krasnov, Marina Yu. Mazina, Julia V. Nikolenko and Nadezhda E. Vorobyeva
Glycans play essential roles in biological functions such as differentiation and cancer. Recently, glycans have been considered as biomarkers for physiological aging. However, details regarding the specific gl...
Leishmania contains a concatenated
mitochondrial DNA, kDNA. Universal minicircle sequence binding protein (UMSBP), a mitochondrial protein, initiates kDNA replication by binding with ...
Authors: Ruby Singh, Bidyut Purkait, Kumar Abhishek, Savita Saini, Sushmita Das, Sudha Verma, Abhishek Mandal, Ayan Kr. Ghosh, Yousuf Ansari, Ashish Kumar, Abul H. Sardar, Ajay Kumar, Pradeep Parrack and Pradeep Das
The proline rich homeodomain protein (PRH), also known as haematopoietically expressed homeobox (HHEX), is an essential transcription factor in embryonic development and in the adult. The PRH protein forms oli...
Authors: Kevin Gaston, Maria-Angela Tsitsilianos, Kerry Wadey and Padma-Sheela Jayaraman
Progenitor cells display interesting features for tissue repair and reconstruction. In the last years, such cells have been identified in different cartilage types. In this study, we isolated a migrative subpo...
Authors: A. F. Elsaesser, S. Schwarz, H. Joos, L. Koerber, R. E. Brenner and N. Rotter
The runt-related transcription factor 2 (Runx2) is a cell-fate-determining factor that controls osteoblast differentiation and bone formation. It has been previously demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs) play i...
Authors: Shouhe Yu, Qianqian Geng, Qiuhui Pan, Zhongyu Liu, Shan Ding, Qi Xiang, Fenyong Sun, Can Wang, Yadong Huang and An Hong
The ability of Zn(II) and Cu(II) metal complexes of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to inhibit acute arterial inflammation in vivo has been studied.
Authors: Rajesh Puranik, Shisan Bao, Antonio M. Bonin, Ravinder Kaur, Jane E. Weder, Llewellyn Casbolt, Trevor W. Hambley, Peter A. Lay, Philip J. Barter and Kerry-Anne Rye
Inflammatory cytokine is important in modulating injured diseases. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), one of potent inflammatory cytokines, plays a dominant role in host defense reaction. However, the concrete e...
Authors: Yulong Dong, Yuzhou Liu, Xingrui Kou, Yingying Jing, Kai Sun, Dandan Sheng, Guofeng Yu, Dandan Yu, Qiudong Zhao, Xue Zhao, Rong Li, Mengchao Wu and Lixin Wei
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells can be induced to undergo terminal differentiation with subsequent loss of tumorigenicity using 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25D) alone or in combination with hematopoietic cytok...
Authors: Aleksandra Marchwicka, Aoife Corcoran, Klaudia Berkowska and Ewa Marcinkowska
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among American women, except for skin cancers. About 12 % women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetime. Currently one of the most...
Authors: Sidney W. Fu, Woojin Lee, Caitrin Coffey, Alexa Lean, Xiaoling Wu, Xiaohui Tan, Yan-gao Man and Rachel F. Brem
Human head and neck squamous carcinoma is the 6th most prevalent carcinoma worldwide. Although many novel therapies have been developed, the clinical treatment for patients remains non-ideal. Chloride intracel...
Authors: Haowei Xue, Jinsen Lu, Renxiang Yuan, Jinli Liu, Yehai Liu, Kaile Wu, Jing Wu, Juan Du and Bing Shen
Translocated in LipoSarcoma (TLS, also known as FUsed in Sarcoma) is an RNA/DNA binding protein whose mutation cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In previous study, we demonstrated that TLS binds to long non...
Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) ICP22 is a multifunctional protein and important for HSV-1 replication. Pseudorabies virus (PRV) ICP22 (P-ICP22) is a homologue of HSV-1 ICP22 and is reported to be able to selec...
Authors: Mingsheng Cai, Si Jiang, Zhancheng Zeng, Xiaowei Li, Chuncong Mo, Yanjia Yang, Chunke Chen, Peiping Xie, Yun Bian, Jinlin Wang, Jinlu Huang, Daixiong Chen, Tao Peng and Meili Li
Amphibians are able to survive for several months without food. However, it is unclear what molecular mechanisms underlie their survival. To characterize the intestinal responses to fasting and refeeding, we i...
Authors: Keiji Tamaoki, Reiko Okada, Akinori Ishihara, Nobuyoshi Shiojiri, Kazuki Mochizuki, Toshinao Goda and Kiyoshi Yamauchi
Virus entry involves multiple steps and is a highly orchestrated process on which successful infection collectively depends. Entry processes are commonly analyzed by monitoring internalized virus particles via...
Authors: Lia R. Walker, Hosni A. M. Hussein and Shaw M. Akula
The thyroid hormone (T3)-induced formation of adult intestine during amphibian metamorphosis resembles the maturation of the mammalian intestine during postembryonic development, the period around birth when p...
Authors: Morihiro Okada, Luan Wen, Thomas C. Miller, Dan Su and Yun-Bo Shi
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a prototypic systemic autoimmune disease. Complement component 4 (C4) has be proved to play a role in pathogenesis of SLE. In the present study, we investigated the effect...
Authors: Hong-Bin Cheng, Rong-Yi Chen, Jing-Ping Wu, Li Chen, Yan-Hua Liang, Hai-Feng Pan, Zi-Feng Pan, Qing-Hua Zhang, Qing Li, Tian-Xi Du, Yong-Mei Lv and Jian-Qiang Shi
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and treatments for lung cancer have a high failure rate. Anti-angiogenic therapy is also often ineffective because of refractory disease. En...
Authors: Yuyi Wang, Ming Jiang, Zhixi Li, Jiantao Wang, Chi Du, Liu Yanyang, Yang Yu, Xia Wang, Nan Zhang, Maoyuan Zhao, Li Wang, Mei Li and Feng Luo
Excessive apoptosis of airway epithelium is reported to induce airway remodeling and inhibited airway epithelium repair is highly associated with development of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease...
Authors: Chun-Hsiang Lin, Yu-Chuan Hong and Shao-Hsuan Kao
One mechanism of resistance of the melanoma-associated BRAF kinase to its small molecule inhibitor vemurafenib is by point mutations in its intron 8 resulting in exons 4–8 skipping. In this report, we carried ...
Myotubularin-related protein 14 (MTMR14) is a novel phosphoinositide phosphatase with roles in the maintenance of normal muscle performance, autophagy, and aging in mice. Our initial pilot study demonstrated t...
Authors: Yin Lv, Lu Xue, Congli Cai, Qing-Hua Liu and Jinhua Shen
Inflammatory processes and metabolic alterations are supposed to substantially interact. Recently, cumulating reports describe a profound role of interleukin(IL)-22 in this relationship. IL-22 is a particular ...
RNA interference (RNAi) is a robust tool for inhibiting specific gene expression, but it is limited by the uncertain efficiency of siRNA or shRNA constructs. It has been shown that the overexpression of ARGONA...
Authors: Jiening He, Lian Huang, Huiling Qiu, Jiexuan Li, Lan Luo, Yanjiao Li, Shengli Tian, Kang Kang, Jun Luo, Lin Liu and Deming Gou
The initiation of hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication involves the formation of covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) and its transcription into pregenomic RNA (pgRNA) in hepatocyte nuclei. The regulatory me...
Authors: Hui Wang, KeHui Liu, Bernard A. M. Fang, HaiQing Wu, FengDi Li, XiaoGang Xiang, WeiLiang Tang, GangDe Zhao, LanYi Lin, Shisan Bao and Qing Xie
Exposure to a moderate to high dose of ionizing radiation (IR) not only causes acute radiation syndrome but also induces long-term (LT) bone marrow (BM) injury. The latter effect of IR is primarily attributed ...
Authors: Chengcheng Li, Lu Lu, Junling Zhang, Song Huang, Yonghua Xing, Mingfeng Zhao, Daohong Zhou, Deguan Li and Aimin Meng
Use of low doses of digitalis to prevent the development of heart failure was advocated decades ago, but conflicting results of early animal studies dissuaded further research on this issue. Recent discoverie...
Authors: Jian Wu, Daxiang Li, Lingling Du, Mustafa Baldawi, Marjorie E. Gable, Amir Askari and Lijun Liu
Nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) is a family of inducible transcription factors that plays a vital role in different aspects of immune responses. NF-κB is normally sequestered in the cytoplasm as inactive complexes v...
Skeletal muscle fibers are generally classified into two groups: slow (type I) and fast (type II). Fibers in each group are uniquely designed for specific locomotory needs based on their intrinsic cellular pro...
Authors: Victor M. Luna, Eriko Daikoku and Fumihito Ono
The directed differentiation of mesenchymal
stem cells (MSCs) is tightly controlled by a complex network. Wnt signaling pathways have an important function in controlling the fate of MSCs. However, the mechan...
The tumor suppressor protein, promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML), was originally identified in acute promyelocytic leukemia due to a chromosomal translocation between chromosomes 15 and 17. PML is the core c...
Tens of thousands of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been discovered in eukarya, but their functions are largely unknown. Fortunately, lncRNA–protein interactions may offer details of how lncRNAs play impo...
Authors: Yongfang Yang, Liwei Wen and Hongliang Zhu
Hepatocyte nuclear factor-1beta (HNF1β) was initially identified as a liver-specific transcription factor. It is a homeobox transcription factor that functions as a homodimer or heterodimer with HNF1α. HNF1β p...
Some inherited coagulation factor deficiencies are caused by intracellular retention or degradation of misfolded proteins, and chemical chaperones have been shown to reverse protein misfolding. The purpose of ...
Authors: Maria Eugenia Chollet, Ellen Skarpen, Nina Iversen, Per Morten Sandset and Grethe Skretting
MicroRNA-720 (miR-720), a nonclassical miRNA, is involved in the initiation and progression of several tumors. In our previous studies, miR-720 was shown to be significantly upregulated in cervical cancer tiss...
Authors: Yunlan Tang, Yi Lin, Chuang Li, Xunwu Hu, Yi Liu, Mingyang He, Jun Luo, Guihong Sun, Tao Wang, Wenxin Li and Mingxiong Guo
