Blogs for June 2019: Novus Biologicals

PAMPs and DAMPs: What is the Same and What is Different About These Molecules?

Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - 14:33

TLR interactive signaling pathway, Novus Biologicals

By Victoria Osinski

What are PAMPs and DAMPs

Inflammation results from stimuli signaling damage or infection. The immune system 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...

Autophagic flux: Is p62 a good indicator?

Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - 09:26

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...

Identifying tumoral and stromal transcriptomes that underlie tumor plasticity and stromal neuroinflammatory response in brain metastasis

Tuesday, June 18, 2019 - 09:45

AIF-1/Iba-1 expression in mouse brain, IHC

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....

Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration: Neuroinflammation and microglial activation

Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - 10:51

Alzheimer's Disease and Neuroinflammation Poster, R&D Systems, showing blood vessle and both health and diseased neurons.

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...

Best genes to knockout to control autophagic flux

Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - 08:27

By Christina Towers, PhD

Autophagy flux: Basic principles

Autophagic flux is defined as the amount of cellular material degraded and recycled through the process of autophagy, whereby cells break down and discard waste. Briefly, the autophagy process involves the formation of an autophagosome, which engulfs cytoplasmic materials. Fusion of the autophagosome with acidic lysosomes mediates the degradation of cellular contents. The process involves over 30 core autophagy proteins (...