The role of leptin was investigated in two models of T cell-mediated hepatitis: the administration of Con A or of Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (PEA). In both models, leptin-deficient (ob/ob) mice were protected from liver damage and showed lower induction of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha and IL-18 compared with their lean littermates. Neutralization of TNF-alpha reduced induction of IL...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (PEA) causes severe hepatotoxicity in experimental animals and is useful in investigations of immune-mediated liver injury. However, strain differences in the sensitivity to PEA-induced hepatotoxicity in rats remains be elucidated. In this study, we determined the severity of PEA-induced hepatotoxicity in six genetically different rat strains. Male LE (Long Eva...

Introduction Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (PE) is one of the most potent toxins capable of modifying specific target proteins in mammalian cells. PE is consisted of three functional and structural domains as shown by x-ray crystallography. Domain Ia (amino acids 1-252) is responsible for cell recognition, domain II (amino acids 253-364) is involved in the translocation of the toxin to the ...

Fuzzy logic systems technology, particularly fuzzy control and fuzzy modeling techniques, is one of the most successful practical applications of fuzzy set and logic theory. In the past few years, the trend has been to combine fuzzy logic systems technology with artificial neural network technology to produce so called neural-fuzzy or fuzzy-neural systems. The objective is to take the advantage...

PURPOSE Oral squamous carcinoma (OSCC) cells exhibit resistance to chemotherapeutic agent-mediated apoptosis in the late stage of malignancy. Increased levels of heat shock proteins 70 (HSP70) in cancer cells are known to confer resistance to apoptosis. Since recent advances in the understanding of bacterial toxins have produced new strategies for the treatment of cancers, we investigated the e...

M plant pathogens secrete toxins that disable their host (1). Some of these have general phytotoxic properties and are active toward a broad range of plant species. Others are host-selective, affecting only certain plant varieties or genotypes. These host-selective toxins (HSTs) can act as agents of virulence of pathogens to toxinsensitive hosts, so determining host range or specificity (1, 2)....