Background and Purpose—Early brain injury is an important pathological process after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). The goal of this study was to evaluate whether the 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor ( 7nAChR) agonist PNU-282987 attenuates early brain injury after SAH and whether 7nAChR stimulation is associated with down-regulation of caspase activity via phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-Akt si...

Caspase-1 is an essential effector of inflammation, pyroptosis, and septic shock. Few caspase-1 substrates have been identified to date, and these substrates do not account for its wide range of actions. To understand the function of caspase-1, we initiated the systematic identification of its cellular substrates. Using the diagonal gel proteomic approach, we identified 41 proteins that are dir...

The objective of this study was to evaluate lung protection by the volatile anesthetic sevoflurane (SEVO), which inhibits apoptosis. Male Sprague-Dawley rats (250-280 g; n=18) were randomly divided into three groups. The LPS group received 5 mg/kg endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide), which induced acute lung injury (ALI). The control (CTRL) group received normal saline and the SEVO group received se...

miRNAs have been linked to many human diseases, including ischemic stroke, and are being pursued as clinical diagnostics and therapeutic targets. Among the aberrantly expressed miRNAs in our previous report using large-scale microarray screening, the downregulation of miR-378 in the peri-infarct region of middle cerebral artery occluded (MCAO) mice can be reversed by hypoxic preconditioning (HP...

BACKGROUND Cell death mode has been studied in cancer, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, apoptosis and necrosis are investigated for the first time in patients with chronic calculous cholecystitis. METHODS AND MATERIALS Thirty five (35) patients (27 women and 8 men, aged 55.65 +/- 13.48 years) with symptomatic chronic calculous cholecystitis underwent laparoscopic cho...

The onset of apoptosis is coupled to the proteolytic activation of a family of cysteine proteases, termed caspases. These proteases cleave their target proteins after an aspartate residue. Following caspase activation during apoptosis, a number of specific proteins have been shown to be cleaved. Here we show that Nedd4, a ubiquitin-protein ligase containing multiple WW domains and a calcium/lip...

PKN, a fatty acid- and Rho-activated serine/threonine kinase having a catalytic domain highly homologous to protein kinase C (PKC), was cleaved at specific sites in apoptotic Jurkat and U937 cells on Fas ligation and treatment with staurosporin or etoposide, respectively. The cleavage of PKN occurred with a time course similar to that of PKCdelta, a known caspase substrate. This proteolysis was...