Leaf rust and powdery mildew are two important foliar diseases in wheat. A recombinant inbred line (RIL) population, obtained by crossing bread wheat cultivars (‘Victo’ ‘Spada’), was evaluated for resistance to the pathogens at seedling stage. Upon developing a genetic map of 8726 SNP loci, linkage analysis identified three Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs), with ‘Victo’ contributing resistant all...

RNA silencing refers to small regulatory RNA-mediated processes that repress endogenous gene expression and defend hosts from offending viruses. As an anti-host defense mechanism, viruses encode suppressors that can block RNA silencing pathways. Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV)-encoded 2b protein was among the first suppressors identified that could inhibit post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS)...

BACKGROUND Clara cell 10-kDa protein (CC10) is a multifunctional protein with anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects. Induction of CC10 expression by gene transfection may possess potential therapeutic effect. Nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) plays a key role in the inflammatory processes of airway diseases. METHOD/RESULTS To investigate potential therapeutic effect of CC10 gene transfection...

PprI accelerates radiation-induced DNA damage repair via regulating the expression of DNA repair genes and enhances antioxidative enzyme activity in Deinococcus radiodurans after radiation. The main aim of our study was to determine whether the expression of pprI gene could fulfil its DNA repair function in eukaryotes and enhance the radioresistance of eukaryotic organism or not. In this study,...

T-cell activation gene 3 (TCA3) encodes a beta-chemokine that is transcriptionally regulated in mast cells; the gene has a functional NF-kappaB element at positions -194 to -185. The 5'-flanking region of this gene is also known to have a negative regulatory region between -2057 and -1342. To characterize the negative regulatory elements (NREs), this region was sequenced and then digested by Hi...

BACKGROUND Coxsackievirus B3 is an important infectious agent of viral myocarditis, pancreatitis and aseptic meningitis, but there are no specific antiviral therapeutic reagents in clinical use. RNA interference-based technology has been developed to prevent the viral infection. METHODS To evaluate the impact of RNA interference on viral replication, cytopathogenicity and animal survival, sho...

An antisense phosphorothioate (S)-oligonucleotide to a sequence in the intervening (I) region of the gamma 2b immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy chain gene inhibits Ig secretion by B cells stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or LPS plus interleukin 4. It is also a striking stimulant of DNA synthesis by resting B cells. The antisense S-oligonucleotide causes a 10-20-fold increase in the expression o...

In order to develop an effective strategy of breast cancer therapy targeting survivin and its splice variants survivin-ΔEx3 and survivin-2B, the present study constructed four expression vectors by fusing the survivin antisense gene, the survivin (T34A) gene, the survivin-ΔEx3 antisense gene, and the survivin-2B gene with the enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) gene. Each of these vectors...

The 2B proteins of coxsackievirus and poliovirus (PV) share significant structural similarity and exhibit similar biochemical activities, namely inhibition of protein secretion and modification of membrane permeability. Both proteins contain two hydrophobic domains in the carboxy-terminal two-thirds of their sequence, of which one has the potential to form a cationic amphipathic alpha-helix. To...