Evaluation of: Iida N, Dzutsev A, Stewart CA et al. Commensal bacteria control cancer response to therapy by modulating the tumor microenvironment. Science 342, 967-970 (2013). Intestinal microbiota is essential for host physiological processes, including the maintenance of epithelial barrier and immune functions. However, paradoxically, the intestinal microbiota can promote various types of ex...

Loss of imprinting (LOI) of the insulin-like growth factor II (IGFII) gene is a frequent phenomenon in colorectal tumor tissues. Previous reports indicated that subjects with colorectal neoplasias show LOI of IGFII in circulating lymphocytes. Furthermore, LOI of IGFII is strongly related to the methylation of a differentially methylated region (DMR) in intron 2 of IGFII, suggesting that the met...

Although the molecular basis of esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) and its precursor, Barrett’s esophagus (BE), have been studied, further insights are needed into early premalignant events. In the current study, we comprehensively identified epigenetically altered genes at various time points during neoplastic progression in BE. We compared global DNA methylation profiles of two groups of BE pati...

Tests for potentially pathogenic amoebae were carried out in order to determine the presence of free-living amoebae of genus Acanthamoeba in soil and beach sand sources related to human environments in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Acanthamoeba identification was based on the morphology of cyst and trophozoite forms and PCR amplification with a genus specific primer pair. The pathogenical po...

objective(s)cpg oligodeoxynucleotides (cpg odns) have been shown to have potent immunostimulatory adjuvant activity for a wide range of antigens. due to susceptibility of phosphodiester cpg odns (po cpg) to nuclease degradation, nuclease-resistant phosphorothioate cpg odns (ps cpg) were currently utilized in an in vivo model. in this study, according to some recently reported drawbacks with ps ...

We described a DNA microarray-based method combined with bisulphite treatment of DNA and regular PCR to examine hyper-methylation in promoter 1A of APC gene. A set of oligonucleotide probes were designed and immobilized on the aldehyde-coated glass slides for detecting the methylation pattern of 15 selected CpG sites in the region. The methylation status of 30 colorectal tumor samples have been...

K ABSTRACT: Two major populations of dendritic cells (DCs), myeloid and plasmacytoid, can be isolated from human peripheral blood, and are distinguished by differential expression of the cell surface markers CD11c and CD123. These two populations of DCs also are different in their expression of Toll-like receptor (TLRs), which are involved in their activation. To investigate the early events du...

The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a membrane glycoprotein that has been identified as a marker of cancer-initiating cells. EpCAM is highly expressed on most carcinomas, and transient silencing of EpCAM expression leads to reduced oncogenic potential. To silence the EpCAM gene in a persistent manner via targeted DNA methylation, a low activity mutant (C141S) of the CpG-specific DN...

Single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) is characterized by high conformational flexibility that allows these molecules to adopt a variety of conformations. Here we used native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to show that cytosine methylation at CpG sites affects the conformational flexibility of short ssDNA m...