The histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDA-CIs) butyrate and trichostatin A activate gamma-globin expression via a p38 mitogen-activating protein kinase (MAPK)-dependent mechanism. We hypothesized that down-stream effectors of p38 MAPK, namely activating transcription factor-2 (ATF-2) and cyclic AMP response element (CRE) binding protein (CREB), are intimately involved in fetal hemoglobin inductio...

Asthma is highly prevalent, but current therapies cannot influence the chronic course of the disease. It is thus important to understand underlying early molecular events. In this study, we aimed to use microRNAs (miRNAs) - which are critical regulators of signaling cascades - to identify so far uncharacterized asthma pathogenesis pathways. Therefore, deregulation of miRNAs was assessed in whol...

Aripiprazole is a D2-like receptor (D2R) partial agonist with a favourable clinical profile. Previous investigations indicated that acute and short-term administration of aripiprazole had effects on PKA activity, GSK3β-dependent pathways, GABAA receptors, NMDA receptor and CREB1 in the brain. Since antipsychotics are used chronically in clinics, the present study investigated the long-term effe...

Promoter-specific expression of the PPARGC1A gene in untrained and trained human skeletal muscle was investigated. Ten untrained males performed a one-legged knee extension exercise (for 60 min) with the same relative intensity both before and after 8 weeks of cycling training. Samples from the m. vastus lateralis of each leg were taken before and after exercise. Postexercise PPARGC1A gene expr...

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe psychiatric disorder that affects 1% of the population. Recently, there have been many attempts to identify specific genes that are involved in BD; however, the task of finding susceptibility genes is not easy due to the complexity of the disorder. Since lithium (Li) has been used for over 40 years now as an effective prophylactic agent and response to Li treat...

BACKGROUND MicroRNAs (miRNA) have been documented playing critical roles in cancer progression. Aberrant expression of miR-205 has been reported in several types of cancer. However, the role and mechanism of miR-205 in colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unclear. METHODS In this study, the expression levels of miR-205 in CRC tissues and cell lines were detected by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-...

A hallmark of aberrant activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway has been observed in most colorectal cancers (CRC), but little is known about the role of non-coding RNAs regulated by this pathway. Here, we found that miR-150 was the most significantly upregulated microRNA responsive to elevated of Wnt/β-catenin signaling activity in both HCT116 and HEK293T cells. Mechanistically, the β...

Serotonin (5-HT)-induced long-term facilitation (LTF) of the Aplysia sensorimotor synapse depends on enhanced gene expression and protein synthesis, but identification of the genes whose expression and regulation are necessary for LTF remains incomplete. In this study, we found that one such gene is synapsin, which encodes a synaptic vesicle-associated protein known to regulate short-term synap...

Cyclic AMP response element-binding protein (CREB) contributes to adaptation of mesocorticolimbic networks by modulating activity-regulated transcription and plasticity in neurons. Activity or expression changes of CREB in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and orbital frontal cortex (OFC) interact with behavioral changes during reward-motivated learning. However, these findings from animal models hav...

miR-493-5p downregulation has emerged as a critical player in cancer progression yet, the underlying mechanisms of miR-493-5p expression pattern and its function in prostate cancer remains to be elucidated. Here, we illustrate that miR-493-5p is frequently downregulated in prostate cancer, at least partially due to altered DNA methylation. miR-493-5p functions as a tumor suppressor in prostate ...