Furin, a potent proprotein convertase involved in activation of several cancer-related substrates, is synthesized as an inactive zymogen, thus minimizing the occurrence of premature enzymatic activity that would lead to inappropriate protein activation or degradation. This natural inhibitory mechanism is based on the presence of an inactivating prosegment at the NH2 terminal of the zymogen. Aft...

BACKGROUND AND AIM Although a liver transplantation is considered to be the only effective long-term treatment in many cases of liver diseases, it is limited by a lack of donor organs and immune rejection. As an autologous stem cell approach, this study was conducted to assess whether forkhead box A2 (Foxa2) gene overexpression in bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) could protect t...

Alternative splicing of the voltage-gated Ca(2+) (CaV) α1-subunit adds to the functional diversity of Ca(2+) channels. A variant with a 73-nt deletion in exon 15 of the Cav1.2 α1-subunit (Cav1.2Δ73) produced by alternative splicing that predicts a truncated protein has been described, but its function, if any, is unknown. We sought to determine if, by analogy to other truncated CaV α1-subunits,...