Traditional quantitative genetics assumes that an individual's phenotype is determined by both genetic and environmental factors. For many animals, part of the environment is social and provided by parents and other interacting partners. When expression of genes in social partners affects trait expression in a focal individual, indirect genetic effects occur. In this study, we explore the effec...

The use of universal RNA reference sets is an increasingly common approach to molecular classification studies with cDNA microarrays. Here we evaluated the reliability of indirect measurements of fluorescence ratios with a common RNA reference as a means of identifying differentially expressed genes. Comparisons of direct and indirect measures of differential gene expression showed a strong ove...

background the fas receptor/ligand system including soluble forms is the most important apoptotic initiator in the liver. dysregulation of this pathway may contribute to abnormal cell proliferation and cell death and is regarded as one of the mechanisms preventing the immune system from rejecting the tumor cells. objectives to analyze the role of fas system fas/ fas ligand (fas/ fasl) in the mu...

CYP3A4 metabolizes many drugs on the market. Although transcriptional regulation of CYP3A4 is known to be tightly controlled by some nuclear receptors (NR) including vitamin D receptor (VDR/NR1I1), posttranscriptional regulation of CYP3A4 remains elusive. In this study, we show that noncoding microRNAs (miRNAs) may control posttranscriptional and transcriptional regulation of CYP3A4 by directly...

The erect wing locus of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster encodes a protein, EWG, that shares extensive homology with the P3A2 DNA binding protein of sea urchin and a recently identified mammalian transcription factor. Loss-of-function erect wing alleles result in embryonic lethality. Viable alleles of erect wing cause severe abnormalities of the indirect flight muscles. We have analyzed th...

Somatic embryogenesis is the process by which somatic cells are induced into an embryogenic state, followed by differentiation into embryos. Somatic embryogenesis, in addition to being a method of propagation, can serve as an experimental tool for research into plant embryo development. This is a review of the current literature on in vitro plant somatic embryogenesis and the molecular advances...