International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Volume 17, Issue 6

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) represent reactive products belonging to the partial reduction of oxygen. It has been reported that ROS are involved in different signaling pathways to control cellular stability. Under normal conditions, the correct fun...

About one-third of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) have bone metastasis that are often osteolytic and cause substantial morbidity, such as pain, pathologic fracture, spinal cord compression and hypercalcemia. The presence of bone me...

Stipa purpurea (S. purpurea) is the dominant plant species in the alpine steppe of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China. It is highly resistant to cold and drought conditions. However, the underlying mechanisms regulating the stress tolerance are unknown...

MicroRNAs act by post-transcriptionally regulating the gene expression of 30%–60% of mammalian genomes. MicroRNAs are key regulators in all cellular processes, though the mechanism by which the cell activates or represses microRNA-mediated translatio...

Polysaccharides from Morchella esculenta have been proven to be functional and helpful for humans. The purpose of this study was to investigate the chemical structure and anti-proliferating and antitumor activities of a Morchella esculenta polysaccha...

Breast cancer develops over a timeframe of 2–3 decades prior to clinical detection. Given this prolonged latency, it is somewhat unexpected from a biological perspective that obesity has no effect or reduces the risk for breast cancer in premenopausa...

Substance P (SP), a member of tachykinin family, is involved in the inflammation of the central nervous system and in the appearance of cerebral edema. Higher serum levels of SP have been found in 18 patients with cerebral ischemia compared with heal...

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is defined by a mean pulmonary arterial pressure over 25 mmHg at rest and is diagnosed by right heart catheterization. Among the different groups of PH, pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterized by a progressi...

Staphylococcus epidermidis, especially methicillin-resistant strains, may be the source of surgical site infections and may be a reservoir of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) for S. aureus. The aim of this study was to investigate the...

TRAIL (tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand) is an endogenous ligand, which plays role in immune surveillance and anti-tumor immunity. It has ability to selectively kill tumor cells showing no toxicity to normal cells. We tested th...

Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) is the most classical technique in the field of gene expression study. This method requires an appropriate reference gene to normalize mRNA levels. In this study, the expression stability of four frequently-used r...

Extensive utilization increases the exposure of humans to Ag nanoparticles (NPs) via the oral pathway. To comprehensively address the action of Ag NPs to the gastrointestinal systems in real situations, i.e., the long-term low-dose exposure, we evalu...

Respiratory chain complexes are organized into large supercomplexes among which supercomplex In + IIIn + IVn is the only one that can directly transfer electrons from NADH to oxygen. Recently, it was reported that the formation of supercomplex In + I...

Plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria can improve plant growth, development, and stress adaptation. However, the underlying mechanisms are still largely unclear. We investigated the effects of Bacillus megaterium BOFC15 on Arabidopsis plants. BOFC15 p...

The first compound that inhibited the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), sirolimus (rapamycin) was discovered in the 1970s as a soil bacterium metabolite collected on Easter Island (Rapa Nui). Because sirolimus showed antiproliferative activity, r...

Atomic minerals are the smallest components of bone and the content of Ca, being the most abundant mineral in bone, correlates strongly with the risk of osteoporosis. Postmenopausal women have a far greater risk of suffering from OP due to low Ca con...

Melanoma often recurs in patients after the removal of the primary tumor, suggesting the presence of recurrent tumor-initiating cells that are undetectable using standard diagnostic methods. As cell fusion has been implicated to facilitate the altera...

Modulating the chlorophyll a (Chl-a) fluorescence by all-trans-β-Carotene (β-Car) in the polarity and non-polarity solutions was investigated. The fluorescence intensity of Chl-a decreased as the concentration of β-Car increased. The excited electron...

Stem cell therapy aims to replace damaged or aged cells with healthy functioning cells in congenital defects, tissue injuries, autoimmune disorders, and neurogenic degenerative diseases. Among various types of stem cells, adult stem cells (i.e., tiss...

Plants have developed biochemical responses to adapt to biotic stress. To characterize the resistance mechanisms in poplar tree against Apripona germari, comprehensive metabolomic changes of poplar bark and xylem in response to A. germari infection w...

Mammalian tissue-specific stem cells and progenitors demonstrate differential DNA damage response. Neural progenitors in dentate gyrus of the hippocampus are known to undergo apoptosis after irradiation. Using a mouse model of hippocampal neuronal de...

Recent evidence suggests that C-X-C chemokine receptor type 4 (CXCR4) heteromerizes with α_1A/B-adrenoceptors (AR) and atypical chemokine receptor 3 (ACKR3) and that CXCR4:α_1A/B-AR heteromers are important for α₁-AR function in vascular smooth muscle...

There is compelling evidence that serum, tissue and intracellular levels of copper are elevated in all types of cancer. Copper has been suggested as an important co-factor for angiogenesis. It is also a major metal ion present inside the nucleus, bou...

Renal fibrosis can be induced in different renal diseases, but ultimately progresses to end stage renal disease. Although the pathophysiologic process of renal fibrosis have not been fully elucidated, it is characterized by glomerulosclerosis and/or...

Macrophages are one kind of innate immune cells, and produce a variety of inflammatory cytokines in response to various stimuli, such as oxidized low density lipoprotein found in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. In this study, the effect of phosp...

Human Amylin, or islet amyloid polypeptide (hIAPP), is a small hormone secreted by pancreatic β-cells that forms aggregates under insulin deficiency metabolic conditions, and it constitutes a pathological hallmark of type II diabetes mellitus. In typ...

The proportion of foodborne disease caused by pathogenic microorganisms is rising worldwide, with staphylococcal food poisoning being one of the main causes of this increase. Juglone is a plant-derived 1,4-naphthoquinone with confirmed antibacterial...

The 18-kDa translocator protein (TSPO) is a potential mitochondrial target for drug delivery to tumors overexpressing TSPO, including brain cancers, and selective TSPO ligands have been successfully used to selectively deliver drugs into the target....

Actin filament-associated protein-120kD (AFAP-120) is an alternatively spliced isoform of actin filament-associated protein-110kD (AFAP-110) and contains an additional neuronal insert (NINS) fragment in addition to identical domains to the AFAP-110....

Cypermethrin is one of the most highly effective synthetic pyrethroid insecticides. The toxicity of cypermethrin to the reproductive and nervous systems has been well studied. However, little is known about the toxic effect of cypermethrin on immune...

Cytosine DNA methylation (CDM) is a highly abundant, heritable but reversible chemical modification to the genome. Herein, a machine learning approach was applied to analyze the accumulation of epigenetic marks in methylomes of 152 ecotypes and 85 si...

Heart transplantation (HTx) is the ultimate treatment for end-stage heart failure. The number of patients on waiting lists for heart transplants, however, is much higher than the number of available organs. The shortage of donor hearts is a serious c...

Since the successful characterization of urinary extracellular vesicles (uEVs) by Knepper’s group in 2004, these vesicles have been a focus of intense basic and translational research worldwide, with the aim of developing novel biomarkers and therape...

Human milk (HM) is a complex biofluid conferring nutritional, protective and developmental components for optimal infant growth. Amongst these are maternal cells, which change in response to feeding and were recently shown to be a rich source of miRN...

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Over the last decades, TB has also emerged in the pediatric population. Epidemiologic data of childhood TB are still limited and there is an urgent need of more data on very large coh...

Human adipose-derived stem cells (hASCs) have a capacity to undergo adipogenic, chondrogenic, and osteogenic differentiation. Recently, hASCs were applied to various fields including cell therapy for tissue regeneration. However, it is hard to predic...

Liver fibrosis is a major pathological feature of chronic liver diseases, including liver cancer. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), small noncoding RNAs, regulate gene expression posttranscriptionally and play important roles in various kinds of diseases; however,...

As photosynthetic organisms, microalgae can efficiently convert solar energy into biomass. Microalgae are currently used as an important source of valuable natural biologically active molecules, such as carotenoids, chlorophyll, long-chain polyunsatu...

Bioactive peptides are considered the new generation of biologically active regulators that not only prevent the mechanism of oxidation and microbial degradation in foods but also enhanced the treatment of various diseases and disorders, thus increas...

The B3LYP/6-311+G(d)-SDD method, which considers the relativistic effect of bromine, was adopted for the calculations of the selected polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the present study, in which the B3LYP/6-311+G(d) method was also applied....

Spaceflight occasionally requires multiple extravehicular activities (EVA) that potentially subject astronauts to repeated changes in ambient oxygen superimposed on those of space radiation exposure. We thus developed a novel in vitro model system to...

Previous studies showed that SDF-1α is a catabolic factor that can infiltrate cartilage, decrease proteoglycan content, and increase MMP-13 activity. Inhibiting the SDF-1α/CXCR4 signalling pathway can attenuate the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis (OA)...

Cardiofaciocutaneous syndrome (CFCS) belongs to a group of developmental disorders due to defects in the Ras/Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (RAS/MAPK) signaling pathway named RASophaties. While postnatal presentation of these disorders is well know...

Human gastric cancer (GC) is characterized by a high incidence and mortality rate, largely because it is normally not identified until a relatively advanced stage owing to a lack of early diagnostic biomarkers. Gastroscopy with biopsy is the routine...

Most assassin bugs are predators that act as important natural enemies of insect pests. Mitochondrial (mt) genomes of these insects are double-strand circular DNAs that encode 37 genes. In the present study, we explore the duplication and rearrangeme...

Among many antioxidants that are used for the repairing of oxidative stress induced skin damages, we identified the enriched astaxanthin extract (EAE) from Haematococcus pluvialis as a viable ingredient. EAE was extracted from the red microalgae thro...

Differential gene expression analyses to investigate multiple sclerosis (MS) molecular pathogenesis cannot detect genes harboring genetic and/or epigenetic modifications that change the gene functions without affecting their expression. Differential...

Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is a spectrum of diseases, characterized by debilitating cytopenias and a propensity of developing acute myeloid leukemia. Comprehensive sequencing efforts have revealed a range of mutations characteristic, but not spec...

Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most common endocrine malignancy. RET/PTC rearrangement is the most common genetic modification identified in this category of cancer, increasing proliferation and dedifferentiation by the activation of the RE...

Larval metamorphosis of the veined rapa whelk (Rapana venosa) is a pelagic to benthic transition that involves considerable structural and physiological changes. Because metamorphosis plays a pivotal role in R. venosa commercial breeding and natural...