Humans are exposed to a variety of chemicals including environmental pollutants, cosmetics, food preservatives and drugs. Some of these substances might be harmful to the human body. Traditional toxicological and behavioural investigations performed in animal models are not suitable for the screening of a large number of compounds for potential toxic effects. There is a need for simple and robu...

OBJECTIVES To explore the source of the p19 subunit of interleukin-23 (IL-23) in joints with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the effects of IL-1beta and tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha on IL-23 gene expression in RA fibroblast-like synoviocytes and the effect of IL-23 on proinflammatory cytokines. METHODS Expression of IL-23 p19 in joints was examined by immunohistochemical analysis of patients...

Introduction: The p19 line of embryonal carcinoma cells develops into neurons, astroglia and fibroblasts after aggregation and exposure to retinoic acid (RA). Dehydroepiandroesteron (DHEA) is a neurosteroid, can increase proliferation of human neural stem cell (NSC) and positively regulated the number of neurons produced. This study was initiated to assess the effect of DHEA on neural progenito...

In this study, we have identified novel roles for Sox15 and Sox7 as regulators of muscle precursor cell fate in P19 cells. To examine the role of Sox15 and Sox7 during skeletal myogenesis, we isolated populations of P19 cells with either gene stably integrated into the genome, termed P19[Sox15] and P19[Sox7]. Both SOX proteins were sufficient to upregulate the expression of the muscle precursor...

Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) has been proved capable of reprogramming various differentiated somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells. Recently, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) have been successfully derived from mouse and human somatic cells by the over-expression of a combination of transcription factors. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the reprogramming mediated by...

Certain embryonal carcinoma (EC) cell lines can colonize the embryo following blastocyst injection or embryo aggregation, giving rise to EC-embryo chimaeras. However, such chimaeras often develop abnormally. For example, diploid P19 cells colonize the embryo readily but resulting chimaeras are usually abnormal, with persistence of tumour cells. Retinoic acid (RA) induces differentiation of EC c...

Tumor suppressor proteins must be exquisitely regulated since they can induce cell death while preventing cancer. For example, the p19 tumor suppressor (p14 in humans) appears to stimulate the apoptotic function of the p53 tumor suppressor to prevent lymphomagenesis and carcinogenesis induced by oncogene overexpression. Here we present a genetic approach to defining the role of p19 in regulatin...

Tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV) is one of few RNA plant viruses capable of moving systemically in some hosts in the absence of coat protein (CP). TBSV also encodes another protein (p19) that is not required for systemic movement but functions as a symptom determinant in Nicotiana benthamiana. Here, the role of both CP and p19 in the systemic spread has been reevaluated by utilizing transgenic N...

Sin3 is a transcriptional corepressor for REST silencing machinery that represses multiple neuronal genes in non-neuronal cells. However, functions of Sin3 (Sin3A and Sin3B) in suppression of neuronal phenotypes are not well characterized. Herein we show that Sin3A knockdown impedes the repressive activity of REST and enhances differentiation of pluripotent P19 cells into electrophysiologically...