BACKGROUND The extract of Allium cepa Linn is commonly used as adjuvant food for cancer therapy. We assumed that it includes a potential source of anti-cancer properties. METHODS We investigated anti-cancer effects of polyphenols extracted from lyophilized A. cepa Linn (PEAL) in AGS human cancer cells. RESULTS PEAL inhibited cell growth in a dose-dependent manner. It was related to caspase-...

The large size and complexity of the garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) genome hamper its sequencing and the discovery of pea gene resources. Although transcriptome sequencing provides extensive information about expressed genes, some tissue-specific transcripts can only be identified from particular organs under appropriate conditions. In this study, we performed RNA sequencing of polyadenylated tr...

In a previous study, a novel biodegradable multiblock copolymer, monomethoxy(poly-ethylene glycol)-poly(d,l-lactide-co-glycolide)-poly(l-lysine) (PEAL), was developed as a new drug carrier material. It is imperative to study the biocompatibility and degradation behavior of PEAL to pave the way for clinical applications. Here, we systematically demonstrated that the PEAL copolymer has the approp...

We argue that there will be an increasing future need for the design and implementation of declarative languages that can aggregate trust evidence and therefore inform the decision making of IT systems at run-time. We first present requirements for such languages. Then we discuss an instance of such a language, Peal, which extends an early prototype Peal that was researched by others in collabo...

The garden pea has been a model for the genetics of flowering for several decades and numerous flowering loci have been identified, but until recently little was known about the molecular nature of these loci. This paper presents an update on recent work on the molecular genetics of flowering in pea, outlining progress in gene and mutant isolation, expression analyses, grafting and other physio...

Two additional disulfide bonds and three combined thermostabilizing mutations were introduced into Aspergillus awamori glucoamylase to test their effects on enzyme thermostability and catalytic properties. The single cysteine mutations N20C, A27C, T72C and A471C were made and combined to produce the double cysteine mutations N20C/ A27C and T72C/A471C. The double cysteine mutants were expressed ...

The gene knockdown activity of small interfering RNA (siRNA) has led to their use as potential therapeutics for a variety of diseases. However, successful gene therapy requires safe and efficient delivery systems. In this study, we choose mPEG-PLGA-PLL nanoparticles (PEAL NPs) with ultrasound targeted microbubble destruction (UTMD) to efficiently deliver siRNA into cells. An emulsification-solv...