Squamous metaplasia in airway epithelium is a pathological process arising from abnormal remodeling/repair responses to injury. Proteolytic maturation of many growth and differentiation factors involved in tissue remodeling is controlled by proprotein convertases (PCs). However, the role of these convertases in airway remodeling remains poorly understood. Using a retinoic acid deficiency-induce...

Mobilized peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) are widely used for transplantation, but mechanisms mediating their release from marrow are poorly understood. We previously demonstrated that the chemokines GRObeta/CXCL2 and GRObetaT/CXCL2Delta4 rapidly mobilize PBSC equivalent to granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) and are synergistic with G-CSF. We now show that mobilization by GRObeta...

A human lung carcinoma cell line (A549) was compared with various other cell lines to determine susceptibility to viral growth. In the first phase of the study, A549 cells were compared with human embryonic kidney (HEK) and cynomolgus monkey kidney (CMK) cells for isolation of upper-respiratory disease viruses by using 1,248 throat swab specimens from basic-combat trainees. Of the 552 virus iso...

BACKGROUND Accumulation of macrophages and their in situ expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are important determinants of plaque stability. Activation of membrane-bound MT1-MMP, the major activator of pro-MMP-2, requires intracellular endoproteolytic cleavage of its precursor protein. This type of activation typically requires suitable furin-like proprotein convertases (PCs), specif...

The apicomplexan parasite Cryptosporidium causes diarrheal disease worldwide. Proteolytic processing of proteins plays a significant role in host cell invasion by apicomplexan parasites. In previous studies, we described gp40/15, a Cryptosporidium sp. glycoprotein that is proteolytically cleaved to yield two surface glycopeptides (gp40 and gp15), which are implicated in mediating infection of h...

The role of proteinase inhibitor (PI)-9 in hematopoietic cells remains unclear. To clarify the role of PI-9 in these cells, we compared the expressions of PI-9 mRNA and antigen with those of granzyme B (GrB). While the strongest expression of PI-9 mRNA was observed in a NK cell line YT-N10, it was also expressed in a B-acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line U-Tree02, an Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)...

El presente trabajo busca comprobar empíricamente la hipótesis de curva medioambiental Kuznets (CMK) en las emisiones dióxido carbono (CO₂) y óxido nitroso (N₂O) durante el periodo 1990-2012 para 217 economías, utilizando base datos del Banco Mundial. Se realizó un modelo panel bajo tres alternativas (efectos fijos, efectos aleatorios primeras diferencias). Los resultados obtenidos muestran que...

Abstract Excessive inflammatory responses induced upon SARS-CoV-2 infection are associated with severe symptoms of COVID-19. Inflammasomes activated in response to also COVID-19 severity. Here, we show a distinct mechanism by which N protein promotes NLRP3 inflammasome activation induce hyperinflammation. facilitates maturation proinflammatory cytokines and induces cultured cells mice. Mechanis...