Tumor and stromal interactions in the tumor microenvironment are critical for oncogenesis and cancer progression. Our understanding of the molecular events by which reactive stromal fibroblasts-myofibroblast or cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF)-affect the growth and invasion of prostate cancer remains unclear. Laser capture microdissection and cDNA microarray analysis of CAFs in prostate tumo...

Degeneration and loss of lower motor neurons is the major pathological hallmark of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), resulting from low levels of ubiquitously-expressed survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. One remarkable, yet unresolved, feature of SMA is that not all motor neurons are equally affected, with some populations displaying a robust resistance to the disease. Here, we demonstrate that ...

The intricate interactions between viruses and hosts include exploitation of host cells for viral replication by using many cellular resources, metabolites and energy. Tomato bushy stunt virus (TBSV), similar to other (+)RNA viruses, induces major changes in infected cells that lead to the formation of large replication compartments consisting of aggregated peroxisomal and ER membranes. Yet, it...

Several lines of evidence indicate that the processes of mRNA turnover and translation are intimately linked and that understanding this relationship is critical to elucidating the mechanism of mRNA decay. One clear example of this relationship is the observation that nonsense mutations can accelerate the decay of mRNAs in a process that we term nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. The experiments des...

As aged population dramatically increases in these decades, efforts should be made on the intervention for curing age-associated neurologic degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Caffeoylquinic acid (CQA), an antioxidant component and its derivatives are natural functional compounds isolated from a variety of plants. In this study, we determined the neuroprotective effect of 3,...

Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) activates erythropoietin gene transcription in Hep3B cells subjected to hypoxia. HIF-1 activity is also induced by hypoxia in non-erythropoietin-producing cells, suggesting a more general regulatory role. We now report that RNAs encoding the glycolytic enzymes aldolase A (ALDA), phosphoglycerate kinase 1 (PGK1), and pyruvate kinase M were induced by exposure o...

Reference genes are essential for studying mRNA expression with quantitative PCR (qPCR). We investigated 11 candidate whole-blood neutrophil reference genes (ACTB, B2M, G6PD, GAPDH, GYPC, HPRT, PGK1, RPL19, SDHA, TFRC, and YWHAZ) for beef calves, both males and females, with or without selenium supplementation. Initial screening was based on gene expression level (<28 Cq cycles), variability (S...

We describe a strategy to analyze the impact of single nucleotide mutations on protein function. Our method utilizes a combination of yeast functional complementation, growth competition of mutant pools and polyacrylamide gel immobilized PCR. A system was constructed in which the yeast PGK1 gene was expressed from a plasmid-borne copy of the gene in a PGK1 deletion strain of Saccharomyces cerev...

Quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) has become a widely used tool to examine gene expression levels. Reliable quantification, however, depends on a proper normalization strategy. Normalization with multiple reference genes is becoming the standard, although the most suitable reference genes depend on the applied treatment as well as the tissue or cell type studied. In this s...