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By Jennifer Sokolowski, MD, PhD.
On and in our bodies, microbes outnumber our cells by about ten-to-one. Studies have revealed that the microbiome influences neurogenesis, cognition, and stress responses, leading to increased interest in identifying factors that affect the gut microbiota, and a drive to understand pathways involved in the gut-brain axis.1
The composition of microbiota in the gut affects the...
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By Michalina Hanzel, PhD
Astrocytes are a type of macroglia found in the central nervous system that regulate a vast array of essential brain functions, ranging from synaptogenesis, ion homeostasis and maintenance of the blood-brain barrier, to buffering of neurotransmitters and secretion of neuroactive agents. Considering the plethora of roles that astrocytes...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Generating energy (ATP) from nutrients is a recipe for life. One of the sensors of cellular energy levels is the serine/threonine kinase AMPK. This enzyme facilitates lipid oxidation and glucose uptake when energy levels fall, thereby promoting ATP production. AMPK comprises a catalytic alpha subunit with two regulatory subunits,...
By Christina Towers, PhD
The majority of cancer patients die from metastatic disease at secondary sites. The threshold to undergo metastasis is high. Only a minority of cancer cells acquire invasive phenotypes like motility and the ability to survive under detached conditions. Consistently, only few cancer cells acquire stem cell like properties, including a more mesenchymal morphology...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
It was 1988 when, after decades of research, Dr. GM Reaven of the Stanford University, CA, explained the relationship between four diseases: insulin resistance, hypertension, diabetes and obesity....
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By Michalina Hanzel, PhD
Fused in sarcoma (FUS) is a ribonucleoprotein that continuously shuttles between the nucleus and the cytoplasm to regulate pre-mRNA splicing, mRNA stability and mRNA transport. Mutations in FUS are found in 4% familial and 1% sporadic cases of amyotrophic lateral...
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By Rosa Moreno, PhD.
Physiological low levels of oxygen induce normal hypoxic events across biological systems. This hypoxic state activates hypoxia inducible factors (HIFs) to regulate transcription by binding to the hypoxia response element (HRE) region of...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Stroke is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Cellular players – neurons, astrocytes, endothelial and stromal cells – involved in post-stroke repair through angiogenesis...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma originates from the glandular epithelium of the esophagus, gastroesophageal junction and stomach. The incidence of gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma is declining, but it is still one of the deadliest cancers worldwide. A key reason behind high mortality is that by the time gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma is diagnosed, the cancer has often already metastasized. The search for novel biomarkers underlying gastroesophageal...
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By Victoria Osinski
There are many different immune cells (leukocytes) that are found in circulation along with other cellular components such as platelets and red blood cells. Red blood cells (RBCs) are the most abundant, followed by neutrophils and lymphocytes. The immune cells can be categorized as either mononuclear cells (monocytes and lymphocytes...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Protein phosphorylation refers to a reversible post-translational modification in which a protein kinase adds a phosphate group to an amino acid residue of a target protein. Protein phosphorylation, especially tyrosine phosphorylation, is one of the early events in signal transduction in all eukaryotic cells.
Once a cell is lysed, proteases and phosphatases are released that can degrade or...
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By Rachel M.A. Linger, Ph.D.
Survivin is a small (16.5 kDa) protein normally found in human fetal tissue. In contrast, survivin is typically undetectable in most normal adult tissues. Expression of survivin occurs in several subcellular locations including the cytoplasm, nucleus,...
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By Rosa Moreno, PhD.
This new introductory guide to methods and techniques in immunohistochemistry is written by Dr. Alexander E. Kalyuzhny, Bio-Techne, for the Springer series: Techniques in Life Science and Biomedicine for the Non-Expert . This guide provides a comprehensive introduction along with conceptual and methodological basics for new users to ensure a clear understanding upon which researchers may build their expertise in ...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
DNA methylation represses transcription of many genes, including tumor suppressor genes. A protein called UHRF1 recruits DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) to establish and maintain DNA methylation. UHRF1 has several domains, most notably:
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By Michalina Hanzel, PhD
Alexander disease is a progressive and fatal neurological disease with phenotypes ranging from myelination abnormalities, gait ataxia and megalencephaly to predisposition to seizures. It is an autosomal dominant disease with mutations in the glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) gene that result in astrocytic cytoplasmic inclusions, termed Rosenthal fibers, which contribute to the global neurological...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Since its inception in 1979, Western blotting has undergone several developments. The use of radioactive probes was common throughout 1980s, but utilizing secondary antibodies labelled with fluorescent/chemiluminescent probes has virtually removed the need for radioactivity. Western blotting has become a routine quantitative method in biological research and immunodiagnostics. The following primer discusses some considerations when quantitating Western blot data.
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By Jennifer Sokolowski, MD, PhD.
Microglia play important roles in the brain in both homeostatic and pathological conditions, acting to clear debris and dying cells. There is evidence to suggest that microglial dysfunction contributes to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and modulation of microglial activity may be a method to treat such diseases.1 Cell-based therapies represent a novel approach whereby the introduction of microglia that possess the desired phenotype could potentially be...
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By Christina Towers, PhD
Selective autophagic degradation of damaged mitochondria, known as mitophagy, has been described as a cyto-protective process. Accordingly, defects in mitophagy have been associated with a number of diseases including muscle atrophy, cancer, and multiple neurodegenerative diseases. Defective mitophagy has been best described in neurons, where the accumulation of damaged mitochondria and the resulting increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS)...
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By Jennifer Sokolowski, MD, PhD.
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be used to create models of human organ systems and are useful for a) ascertaining the mechanisms underlying pathological conditions and b) developing and testing therapeutics. For example, studies have used iPSCs from human patients with diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to test the influence of pathological isoforms of proteins as well as the efficacy of genetic rescue.1,2
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Colorectal cancer stem cells are a rare subpopulation of colorectal cancer cells that can self-renew and initiate and sustain tumor growth when transplanted into an animal host.1,2 Colorectal cancer stem cells are identified by CD133, CD166, CD44, nuclear-beta-catenin, ALDH1, EphB2 and...
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By Victoria Osinski
Inflammation results from stimuli signaling damage or infection. The inflammatory response can be beneficial or harmful depending on the type and duration of stimuli. The source, structure, and abundance of these stimuli vary quite a bit. One major category of inflammatory stimulation, or "signal 0s" is the family of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs).1,2 These patterns are found on bacterial cell walls, DNA, lipoproteins, carbohydrates, or other structures. While many DAMPs and PAMPs have been identified, they stimulate inflammatory...
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By Christina Towers, PhD
Is p62 a good indicator of autophagic flux? The short answer: Yes … but … SQSTM1 encodes the cargo adaptor protein, p62, which interacts with autophagic substrates and delivers them to autophagosomes for degradation. In the process, p62 is itself degraded and when autophagy is induced, a corresponding decrease in p62 levels is observed. Congruently, when autophagy is potently inhibited, i.e. genetic knock out of ATG core autophagy proteins like ATG5 or ATG7, p62 accumulates in the cell. These changes can be observed by immunofluorescent staining, western blotting, and immunohistochemistry in the...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm. D., PhD.
Cancers in the brain often come from tumors elsewhere in the body. Several adaptive mechanisms influence brain metastasis, such as blood brain barrier leakage that can be induced by stroma or disseminated tumor cells. The brain tumor microenvironment is complex, but the metastasizing cancer cells share common molecular features. To define such molecular characteristics of brain metastasis in vivo, a team led by Dr. Don Nguyen of Yale University School of Medicine developed an advanced RNA sequence-based approach....
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By Michalina Hanzel, PhD
In this final instalment of our three blog-posts series on major cellular mechanisms responsible for neurodegenerative disorders, we will explore the processes of neuroinflammation and microglial activation. Previously, the role of autophagy in the clearance of aggregation-prone proteins in the context of neurodegenerative diseases was discussed in Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration: Protein aggregation and failure of autophagy, and the role of mitochondria and...
![Expression of RhoA, B and C detected in the cytoplasm of A431 cells, a model of human epidermoid carcinoma, compared to negative control analyzed in the absence of RhoA Antibody (1A11-4G10) [NBP2-22528]](https://images.novusbio.com/design/RhoA-B-C-expression-A431-cells-header.jpg "RhoA, B and C expression in A431 cells, ICC")