The effects of inducible expression of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PADPRP) antisense RNA in HeLa cells were determined in order to gain further insight into the biological roles of the poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation modification of nuclear proteins. A recombinant expression plasmid was prepared with the mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) promoter upstream of the antisense-oriented PADPRP cDNA. Expressio...

       Survivin, an inhibitor of apoptosis protein is highly expressed in most cancers and considered as an attractive target for cancer antisense therapy. To vectorize antisense molecules, cationic nanoliposomes are generally used; however, their complexes are too instable, during shelf-life and upon exposure to blood components and extracellular matrix, to be used in-vivo. The present study a...

Background: Dendritic cells (DCs) are ideal accessory cells in the field of gene therapy. Delivery of DNA and siRNA into mammalian cells is a useful technique in treating various diseases caused by single gene defects. Selective gene silencing by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODN)s is an efficient method for the manipulation of cellular functions. An effic...

BACKGROUND Messenger RNA decay is an important mechanism for controlling gene expression in all organisms. The rate of the mRNA degradation directly affects the steady state concentration of mRNAs and therefore influences the protein synthesis. RNaseE has a key importance for the general mRNA decay in E. coli. While RNaseE initiates the degradation of most mRNAs in E. coli, it is likely that th...

BACKGROUND AND THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY Angiogenesis is an important process in physiology and disease pathogenesis and is controlled in a healthy body by a number of stimulatory and inhibitory factors. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of antisense transcript on the sense transcript of the endothelial growth factor (EGF) gene in bacterial system as an approach for the gene regu...

To produce a prolonged decrease in blood pressure, we have developed a nonpathogenic adeno-associated viral vector (AAV) with the antisense DNA for AT1-R. AAV has many advantages over other viral vectors. AAV does not stimulate inflammation or immune reaction. AAV enters nondividing cells and does not replicate. Therefore, it is an appropriate choice for gene therapy. Recombinant AAV was prepar...

Convergent gene pairs with head-to-head configurations are widespread in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes and are speculated to be involved in gene regulation. Here we present a unique mechanism of gene regulation due to convergent transcription from the antagonistic prgX/prgQ operon in Enterococcus faecalis controlling conjugative transfer of the antibiotic resistance plasmid pCF10 from...

We have examined the role of the c-myc protooncogene in chemically induced differentiation of mouse erythroleukemia (MEL) cells by transfecting the cells with recombinant plasmids in which c-myc coding sequences were cloned downstream from the mouse metallothionein I promoter in sense and antisense orientations. We previously showed that treatment of MEL cells with inducers of differentiation l...

PURPOSE The resistance of tumor cells to chemotherapeutic agents, such as cisplatin, remains an important problem to be solved in cancer chemotherapy. One of the mechanisms associated with cisplatin resistance is the enhanced nucleotide excision repair (NER) capacity. Because xeroderma pigmentosum group A (XPA) plays a central role at an early stage in the NER pathway, we are interested in whet...

BACKGROUND Squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (SCCHN), unlike normal mucosal squamous epithelial cells, overexpress epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) messenger RNA and protein. EGFR protein is required to sustain the proliferation of SCCHN cells in vitro. To determine whether EGFR expression contributes to tumor growth, we investigated the effect of suppressing EGFR expression ...