The organic cation transporters OCT1, 2, and 3 (SLC22A1-3) have been implicated in the elimination of biogenic amines such as histamine. Among them, OCT3 was identified as an uptake-2 transporter, responsible for clearance of histamine. Because increasing evidence suggests the involvement of histamine in cerebral ischemia, we investigated the effects of targeted disruption of organic cation tra...

Cardiovascular disease, largely because of disruption of atherosclerotic lesions, accounts for the majority of deaths in people with type 1 diabetes. Recent mouse models have provided insights into the accelerated atherosclerotic lesion initiation in diabetes, but it is unknown whether diabetes directly worsens more clinically relevant advanced lesions. We therefore used an LDL receptor-deficie...

Three of the Type III-secreted effectors of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ExoS, ExoT, and ExoY) each alter mammalian cell morphology in culture without causing a loss of cell viability. For ExoS and ExoT this property involves RhoGAP activity, and leads to actin cytoskeleton disruption and a reduced capacity for internalizing bacteria. ExoY does not possess RhoGAP activity. Instead, cell rounding dep...

objective(s)para-nonylphenol (p-np) is used in many industries and our previous study showed that p-np causes a reduction in rats bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) viability. the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of p-np on osteogenic differentiation of mscs.materials and methodsmscs were isolated and expanded to 3rd passage, then cultured in dmem supplemented with osteoge...

In the present study, we report our findings on the impact of p53 disruption on the sensitivity of human cell lines to the antimitotic agents Taxol and vincristine. Comparisons of cell survival and apoptosis were made with y-irradiation and, in some cases, several other DNA-damaging chemotherapeutic agents. Studies in eight Burkitt's lymphoma and lymphoblastoid cell lines (four wild-type p53 an...

Sulfonamides are the first effective chemotherapeutic agents used for several years to cure or prevent systemic bacterial infections. In addition, this agents showed anti-carbonic anhydrase and cause cell cycle perturbation in the G1 phase, disruption of microtubule assembly, suppression of the transcription activator Nf-Y, angiogenesis and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP). In recent years, novel...

Colonization and disruption of the epithelium is a major infection mechanism of mucosal pathogens. The epithelium counteracts infection by exfoliating damaged cells while maintaining the mucosal barrier function. The sexually transmitted bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC) infects the female reproductive tract primarily from the endocervix, causing gonorrhea. However, the mechanism by which GC...

Latent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is strongly associated with several cancers, including nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), a tumor that is endemic in several parts of the world. We have investigated the molecular basis for how EBV latent infection promotes the development of NPC. We show that the viral EBNA1 protein, previously known to be required to maintain the EBV episomes, also cause...

Metazoan cells form cytoplasmic mRNA granules such as stress granules (SG) and processing bodies (P bodies) that are proposed to be sites of aggregated, translationally silenced mRNAs and mRNA degradation. Poliovirus (PV) is a plus-strand RNA virus containing a genome that is a functional mRNA; thus, we investigated if PV antagonizes the processes that lead to formation of these structures. We ...

Mitochondria often play central roles in apoptotic pathways, and disruption of the mitochondrial transmembrane potential (ΔΨm) has been observed in various cells undergoing apoptosis. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection induces apoptosis in permissive cells; however, investigations of mitochondria-targeted apoptosis in HCMV-infected human foreskin fibroblast (HFF) cells have been limited. He...