The mouse vascular smooth muscle -actin (SMA) gene enhancer is activated in fibroblasts by transforming growth factor 1 (TGF 1), a potent mediator of myofibroblast differentiation and wound healing. The SMA enhancer contains tandem sites for the Sp1 transcriptional activator protein and Pur and repressor proteins. We have examined dynamic interplay between these divergent proteins to identify c...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether the protective effects of puerarine (Pur) against cerebral ischemia is associated with depressing the extracellular levels of amino acid transmitters in brain of rats. METHODS Male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) for 60 min followed by 24 h reperfusion. Pur (50, 100 mg/kg, i.p.) was administered at the on...

OBJECTIVE PML is a rare and fatal demyelinating disease of the CNS caused by the human polyomavirus, JC virus (JCV), which occurs in AIDS patients and those on immunosuppressive monoclonal antibody therapies (mAbs). We sought to identify mechanisms that could stimulate reactivation of JCV in a cell culture model system and targeted pathways which could affect early gene transcription and JCV T-...

A novel polyurethane was successfully synthesized by chain-extension of biodegradable poly (l-lactide) functionalized phosphatidylcholine (PC) with hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI) as chain extender (PUR-PC). The molecular weights, glass transition temperature (Tg) increased significantly after the chain-extension. The hydrophilicity of PUR-PC was better than the one without PC, according to a ...

The MB1 regulatory sequence of the myelin basic protein (MBP) gene spanning between nucleotides -14 to -50 with respect to the transcription start site is critical for cell type-specific transcription of the MBP gene, which encodes the major protein component of myelin sheath in cells derived from the central nervous system (CNS). This regulatory sequence has the ability to interact with a deve...

Pur-α is a nucleic acid-binding protein involved in cell cycle control, transcription, and neuronal function. Initially no prediction of the three-dimensional structure of Pur-α was possible. However, recently we solved the X-ray structure of Pur-α from the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster and showed that it contains a so-called PUR domain. Here we explain how we exploited bioinformatics tools ...

Human JC polyomavirus (JCV) is the etiologic agent of the neurodegenerative disease progressive mulifocal leukoencephalopathy. By using JCV as a model, we investigated the role of the viral early protein tumor antigen (TAg) in the binding of two cellular proteins, Pura alpha and YB-1, to JCV regulatory sequences. Results from band-shift assays with purified YB-1, Pur alpha, and TAg indicated th...

In this article, we propose a Partition ofUnity Refinement (PUR)method to improve the local approximations of elliptic boundary value problems in regions of interest. The PUR method only needs to refine the local meshes and hanging nodes generate no difficulty. The mesh qualities such as uniformity or quasi-uniformity are kept. The advantages of the PUR include its effectiveness and relatively ...