Metastasis remains an unsolved clinical challenge. Two crucial features of metastasizing cancer cells are (a) their ability to dynamically move along the epithelial–hybrid–mesenchymal spectrum and (b) their tumor initiation potential or s...
Epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a complex process through which epithelial (E) cells lose their adherens junctions, transform into mesenchymal (M) cells and attain motility, leading to metastasis at distant organs. Nowadays, the concept of...
Background: Immune aging is a complex process involving various cellular changes, such as a myeloid bias, decreased functional activity of immune cells, accumulation of senescent cells, and alterations in serum levels of bactericidal humoral factors....
BACH2 (BTB Domain and CNC Homolog 2) is a transcription factor that serves as a central regulator of immune cell differentiation and function, particularly in T and B lymphocytes. A picture is emerging that BACH2 may function as a master regulator of...
RhoGTPase is involved in PDGF-BB-mediated VSMC phenotypic modulation. RhoGDIs are key factors in regulating RhoGTPase activation. In the present study, we investigated the regulatory effect of RhoGDI1 on the activation of RhoGTPase in VSMC transforma...
The concept of gingival phenotype and width of keratinized gingiva influencing the diagnosis and treatment in the periodontal scenario is relatively new. Soft and hard tissue dimensions of oral tissues are considered essential parameters in daily cli...
Myocardin is a master regulator of smooth muscle cell (SMC) differentiation, which induces the expression of smooth-muscle-specific genes through its direct association with serum response factor (SRF). During the past two decades, significant insigh...
(1) Background: Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) undergo a complex phenotypic switch in response to atherosclerosis environmental triggers, contributing to atherosclerosis disease progression. However, the complex heterogeneity of VSMCs and how V...
Blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) comprise a broad range of perennial woody species. Introgression of native species into cultivated germplasm has adapted Vaccinium germplasm to a range of climates and growing conditions for cultivated blueberry. Genetic...
Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are essential mediators of cellular homeostasis by maintaining protein functionality and stability, and activating appropriate immune cells. HSP activity is influenced by a variety of factors including diet, microbial stimu...
The C. elegans insulin/IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1) signaling mutant daf-2 recapitulates the dauer metabolic signature—a shift towards lipid and carbohydrate accumulation—which may be linked to its longevity and stress resistance phenotypes....
Timely and complete replication of the genome is essential for life. The PCNA ring plays an essential role in DNA replication and repair by contributing to the processivity of DNA polymerases and by recruiting proteins that act in DNA replication-ass...
Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is an abundantly expressed peptide capable of modulating innate and adaptive immune responses and regulating chemotaxis and cytokine secretion by macrophages. Abnormal regulation of NPY is involved in the development of atheroscl...
Waddington’s epigenetic landscape, a famous metaphor in developmental biology, depicts how a stem cell progresses from an undifferentiated phenotype to a differentiated one. The concept of “landscape” in the context of dynamical systems theory repres...
Arterial remodeling refers to the structural and functional changes of the vessel wall that occur in response to disease, injury, or aging. Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) play a pivotal role in regulating the remodeling processes of the vessel w...
Cancer cells can acquire a spectrum of stable hybrid epithelial/mesenchymal (E/M) states during epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). Cells in these hybrid E/M phenotypes often combine epithelial and mesenchymal features and tend to migrate...
RNA methylation at position N6 in adenosine (m6A) and its associated methyltransferase complex (MTC) are involved in tumorigenesis. We aimed to explore m6A biological function for long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in prostate cancer (PCa) and its clinic...
Fluorescence microscopic images of cells contain a large number of morphological features that are used as an unbiased source of quantitative information about cell status, through which researchers can extract quantitative information about cells an...
Asthma and COPD have characteristic symptoms, yet patients with both are prevalent. Despite this, there is currently no globally accepted definition for the overlap between asthma and COPD, commonly referred to as asthma–COPD overlap (ACO). Gen...
Breeding ornamental white sika deer is a new notion that can be used to broaden the sika deer industry However, it is very rare for other coat phenotypes to occur, especially white (apart from albinism), due to the genetic stability and homogeneity o...
The proper regulation of RNA processing is critical for muscle development and the fine-tuning of contractile ability among muscle fiber-types. RNA binding proteins (RBPs) regulate the diverse steps in RNA processing, including alternative splicing,...
Trihelix transcription factors play a crucial role in varied stress responses as well as in the growth and development of plants. The role of trihelix transcription factors in the non-shattering phenotype in domesticated rice is known. The Vigna grou...
Systems biology is an important concept that connects molecular biology and genomics with computing science, mathematics and engineering. An endeavor is made in this paper to associate basic conceptual ideas of systems biology with clinical medicine....
Poland is one of the northernmost countries in the world where soybean breeding is actively conducted. A large collection of soybean genotypes was analyzed in three locations in Poland during the 2022–2023 growing seasons. The objective of this...
Phenotyping provides important support for corn breeding. Unfortunately, the rapid detection of phenotypes has been the major limiting factor in estimating and predicting the outcomes of breeding programs. This study was focused on the potential of p...
A key step in jasmonic acid (JA) signaling is the ligand-dependent assembly of a coreceptor complex comprising the F-box protein COI1 and JAZ transcriptional repressors. The assembly of this receptor complex results in proteasome-mediated degradation...
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) can influence transcriptional and translational processes in mammalian cells and are associated with various developmental, physiological and phenotypic conditions. However, they remain poorly understood and annotated i...
Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are central players in carotid atherosclerosis plaque development. Although the precise mechanisms involved in plaque destabilization are not completely understood, it is known that VSMC proliferation and migratio...
Cancer cell phenotype largely depends on oxygen availability. The atmospheric oxygen concentration (21%) used in in vitro studies is much higher than in any human tissue. Using well-characterized patient-derived melanoma cell lines, we compared: (i)...
Advances in high-throughput screening of metabolic stability in liver and gut microbiota are able to identify and quantify small-molecule metabolites (metabolome) in different cellular microenvironments that are closest to their phenotypes. Metagenom...
Exposure to environmental factors in early life can influence developmental processes and long-term health in humans. Early life nutrition and maternal diet are well-known examples of conditions shown to influence the risk of developing metabolic dis...
HIF-1α is a master regulator of oxygen homeostasis involved in different stages of cancer development. Thus, HIF-1α inhibition represents an interesting target for anti-cancer therapy. It was recently shown that the HIF-1α interacti...
The flower’s color is regarded as one of the most outstanding features of the rose. Rosa praelucens Byhouwer, an endemic and critically endangered decaploid wild rose species, is abundant in phenotypic diversity, especially in flower color vari...
The maintenance of genome integrity is critical for cell survival. Homologous recombination (HR) is considered the major error-free repair pathway in combatting endogenously generated double-stranded lesions in DNA. Nevertheless, a number of alternat...
In the past few years, cell plasticity has emerged as a mode of targeted therapy evasion in prostate adenocarcinoma. When exposed to anticancer therapies, tumor cells may switch into a different histological subtype, such as the neuroendocrine phenot...
During epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), cells lose epithelial characteristics and acquire mesenchymal properties. These two processes are genetically separable and governed by distinct transcriptional programs, rendering the EMT outputs hi...
Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) can switch from their contractile state to a synthetic phenotype resulting in high migratory and proliferative capacity and driving atherosclerotic lesion formation. The cysteine-rich LIM-only protein 4 (CRP4) rep...
Background: Modeling precancerous stages holds the promise to understand early transformation events, thereby offering the potential for personalized, targeted treatment. Because cancer hijacks developmental pathways, precancerous stages could potent...
Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP-2 to BMP-15) belong to the Transforming Growth Factor (TGF)-β superfamily and, besides their well-documented roles during embryogenesis and bone formation, some of them have recently been described to be involved in t...
Adaptation and survival of cancer cells to various stress and growth factor conditions is crucial for successful metastasis. A double-negative feedback loop between two serine/threonine kinases AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) and Akt can regulate...
HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) plays an important role in many steps of viral replication and represents an appealing antiviral target. Several CA-targeting small molecules of various chemotypes have been studied, but the peptidomimetic PF74 has drawn par...
As one of the best-studied long noncoding RNAs, nuclear paraspeckle assembly transcript 1 (NEAT1) plays a pivotal role in the progression of cancers. NEAT1, especially its isoform NEAT1-1, facilitates the growth and metastasis of various cancers, exc...
The global increase in antimicrobial resistance has revived the interest in “old” substances with antimicrobial activity such as sodium bituminosulfonate. However, for those “old” compounds, scientific studies are still sparse...
A substantial proportion of patients with heart failure (HF) receive suboptimal guideline-recommended therapy. We aimed to identify the factors leading to suboptimal drug prescription in HF and according to HF phenotypes. This retrospective, single-c...
Aging is a complex feature and involves loss of multiple functions and nonreversible phenotypes. However, several studies suggest it is possible to protect against aging and promote rejuvenation. Aging is associated with many factors, such as telomer...
Hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) monitors the cellular response to the oxygen levels in solid tumors. Under hypoxia conditions, HIF-1a protein is stabilized and forms a heterodimer with the HIF-1β subunit. The HIF-1 complex activates the transcript...
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is defined as the accumulation of excessive fat in the liver in the absence of excessive alcohol consumption or any secondary cause. Although the disease generally remains asymptomatic, chronic liver inflammation lead...
Subterranean blind mole rat, Spalax, has developed strategies to withstand cancer by maintaining genome stability and suppressing the inflammatory response. Spalax cells undergo senescence without the acquisition of senescence-associated secretory ph...
Epigenetic mechanisms influence molecular patterns important for the bone-metastatic process, and here we highlight the role of WW-domain containing oxidoreductase (Wwox). The tumor-suppressor Wwox lacks in almost all cancer types; the variable expre...
Background/Objectives: Childhood metabolic dysregulation exerts a profound influence on the development of obesity and metabolic diseases. The human gut microbiota, with highly personalized characteristics, plays an important role in host metabolism....
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