introduction: hyperprolactinemia is a common serious side effect of antipsychotic medications that are currently used in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. pharmacogenetic approaches offer the possibility of identifying patient-specific biomarkers for predicting the risk of this side effect. we investigated a possible relationship between variants (snps) in genes for cytochrome 2d6 (...

background: niche cells, regulating spermatogonial stem cells (sscs) fate are believed to have a reciprocal communication with sscs. the present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of ssc elimination on the gene expression of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (gdnf), fibroblast growth factor 2 (fgf2) and kit ligand (kitlg), which are the main growth factors regulating sscs deve...

background: one of the most important producers of high quality industrial enzymes is the gram-positive bacterium, bacillus subtilis (b. subtilis). one major limitation that hinders the wide application of b. subtilis is the secretion of high levels of extracellular proteases which degrade the secreted foreign proteins. in this study, homologus recombination technique was used to knock out its ...

background: peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma (pparγ), a member of nuclear receptor superfamily, comprises two isoforms in mouse. these two isoforms are encoded by different mrnas, which are arisen by alternative promoter usage. there are two promoter regions upstream of pparγ gene. a 3 kb fragment, containing several transcription factor binding sites, acts as pparγ1 promoter re...

new cancer therapies with novel mechanisms and functions are needed to treat patients with different cancers. virotherapy is a good scenario for such treatment. the advantages of virotherapy include the potential lack of cross resistance with standard therapies and the ability to cause tumor destruction by numerous mechanisms. oncolytic virus not only possesses unique mechanisms of action that ...

bluetongue is an infectious disease that primarily affects sheep. but due to serious socioeconomic consequence of it outbreaks on the international trade it has been included in the oie notifiable diseases (list a). during 2007-8, total number of 130 blood samples gathered from suspected sheep to bluetongue disease in seropositive region including khuzestan, kurdistan, fars, ilam and qum provin...

the lpsa gene, a late acting gene in the biosynthetic pathway of ergovaline, a suspected causative agent for fescue toxicosis in cattle, has been cloned from neotyphodium lolii, an endophytic fungus of lolium perenne. in this study, a similar gene was detected in several strains of endophytic neotyphodium spp. isolated from grass hosts endogenous to iran using direct and nested-pcr assays. exce...

calorie restriction through ingesting no or minimal amounts of food and caloric beverages for periods of time is called fasting. fasting can affect body through changing in physical and metabolic adaptations, as well as mineral and hormonal status. however, psychological effects and sometimes medical complications are likely in case of inappropriate fasting. fasting is associated with changes i...

background: vast variety of intermediate factors including cell cycle regulators, growth factors, transcription factors, and signaling pathways are involved in hematopoietic stem cell (hsc) commitment and differentiation into distinct lineages. vhl, ecad, and runx3 are among these. epigenetics is currently introduced as a potential mechanism to control the gene regulation. the aim of this study...

infertility can be caused by an unexplained reduction in semen quality in males who present asnormal on physical examination and endocrine testing. there is some evidence that aberrantmetabolism of micronutrients such as choline may play a causative role in male factorinfertility. choline is a crucial factor in the regulation of sperm membrane structure andmotility, and this nutrient plays an i...