In the age of extensive global traffic systems, the close neighborhood of man and livestock in some regions of the world, as well as inadequate prevention measures and medical care in poorer countries, greatly facilitates the emergence and dissemination of new virus strains. The appearance of avian influenza viruses that can infect humans, the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SA...

To investigate the role of clathrin in coated vesicle formation, a cell line with inducible expression of clathrin heavy chain (CHC) antisense RNA was produced. After 18 h of CHC antisense RNA expression, the internalization of transferrin was inhibited by 90%. Although the amount of CHC was reduced by only 10%, the frequency of clathrin-coated pits at the cell surface increased by a factor of ...

Restriction-modification systems consist of a modification enzyme that methylates a specific DNA sequence and a restriction endonuclease that cleaves DNA lacking this epigenetic signature. Their gene expression should be finely regulated because their potential to attack the host bacterial genome needs to be controlled. In the EcoRI system, where the restriction gene is located upstream of the ...

A large number of plant genes are aligned with partially overlapping genes in antisense orientation. Transcription of both genes would therefore favour the formation of double-stranded RNA, providing a substrate for the RNAi machinery, and enhanced antisense transcription should therefore reduce sense transcript levels. We have identified a gene pair that resembles a model for antisense-based g...

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease is the most frequent inherited neuropathy, affecting 1/1500 to 1/10000. CMT1A represents 60%-70% of all CMT and caused by a duplication on chromosome 17p11.2 leading an overexpression Peripheral Myelin Protein 22 (PMP22). PMP22 gene under tight regulation small changes in its expression influences myelination affect motor sensory functions. To date, treatment s...

Natural antisense transcripts (NATs) are complementary to protein coding genes and potentially regulate their expression. Despite widespread occurrence of NATs in the genomes of higher eukaryotes, their biological role and mechanism of action is poorly understood. Zebrafish embryos offer a unique model system to study sense-antisense transcript interplay at whole organism level. Here, we invest...

Replication of the ColE1 group plasmids is kinetically regulated by the interaction between plasmid-encoded primer RNA II and antisense RNA I. The binding is dependent on alternative RNA II conformations, formed during the transcription, and effectively inhibits the primer function within some time interval. In this paper, the folding pathways for the wild type and copy number mutants of ColE1 ...

The synthesis of an endogenous ribosomal protein, L1, is selectively and efficiently inhibited by microinjection of antisense Li RNAs into Xenopus oocytes. Repression of Li synthesis is achieved within 12 hr and is maintained for 48 hr. RNase-protection assays reveal the formation of RNARNA duplexes in vivo between the endogenous Li mRNA and injected antisense transcripts. Partial-length antise...

Background: Antisense peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) exhibit growth inhibitory effects on bacteria by inhibiting the expression of essential genes and could be promising therapeutic agents for treating bacterial infections. A study was carried out to determine efficacy several antisense PNAs in extracellular intracellular Mycobacterium smegmatis. Methods: Six obtained from a commercial supplier w...

The transcriptional imbalance due to the difference in the number of X chromosomes between male and female mammals is remedied through X-chromosome inactivation, the epigenetic transcriptional silencing of one of the two X chromosomes in females. The X-linked Xist long non-coding RNA functions as an X inactivation master regulator; Xist is selectively upregulated from the prospective inactive X...