eEF-2 Phosphorylation Down-Regulates P-Glycoprotein Over-Expression in Rat Brain Microvessel Endothelial Cells

ObjectiveWe investigated whether glutamate, NMDA receptors, and eukaryote elongation factor-2 kinase (eEF-2K)/eEF-2 regulate P-glycoprotein expression, and the effects of the eEF-2K inhibitor NH125 on the expression of P-glycoprotein in rat brain microvessel endothelial cells (RBMECs).MethodsCortex was obtained from newborn Wistar rat brains. After surface vessels and meninges were removed, the pellet containing microvessels was resuspended and incubated at 37°C in culture medium. Cell viability was assessed by the MTT assay. RBMECs were identified by immunohistochemistry with anti-vWF. P-glycoprotein, phospho-eEF-2, and eEF-2 expression were determined by western blot analysis. Mdr1a gene expression was analyzed by RT-PCR.ResultsMdr1a mRNA, P-glycoprotein and phospho-eEF-2 expression increased in L-glutamate stimulated RBMECs. P-glycoprotein and phospho-eEF-2 expression were down-regulated after NH125 treatment in L-glutamate stimulated RBMECs.ConclusionseEF-2K/eEF-2 should have played an important role in the regulation of P-glycoprotein expression in RBMECs. eEF-2K inhibitor NH125 could serve as an efficacious anti-multidrug resistant agent.     

Mobile Phone Call Data as a Regional Socio-Economic Proxy Indicator

The advent of publishing anonymized call detail records opens the door for temporal and spatial human dynamics studies. Such studies, besides being useful for creating universal models for mobility patterns, could be also used for creating new socio-economic proxy indicators that will not rely only on the local or state institutions. In this paper, from the frequency of calls at different times of the day, in different small regional units (sub-prefectures) in Côte d''Ivoire, we infer users'' home and work sub-prefectures. This division of users enables us to analyze different mobility and calling patterns for the different regions. We then compare how those patterns correlate to the data from other sources, such as: news for particular events in the given period, census data, economic activity, poverty index, power plants and energy grid data. Our results show high correlation in many of the cases revealing the diversity of socio-economic insights that can be inferred using only mobile phone call data. The methods and the results may be particularly relevant to policy-makers engaged in poverty reduction initiatives as they can provide an affordable tool in the context of resource-constrained developing economies, such as Côte d''Ivoire''s.     

Ginsenoside Rg1 protects H9c2 cells against nutritional stress-induced injury via aldolase /AMPK/PINK1 signalling

Insufficient nutrients supply will greatly affect the function of cardiac myocytes. The adaptive responses of cardiac myocytes to nutritional stress are not fully known. Ginsenoside Rg1 is one of the most pharmacologically active components in Panax Ginseng and possesses protective effects on cardiomyocyte. Here, we investigate the effects of ginsenoside Rg1 on H9c2 cells which were subjected to nutritional stress. Nutritional stress-induced by glucose deprivation strongly induced cell death and this response was inhibited by ginsenoside Rg1. Importantly, glucose deprivation decreased intracellular ATP levels and mitochondrial membrane potential. Ginsenoside Rg1 rescued ATP levels and mitochondrial membrane potential in nutrient-starved cells. For molecular mechanisms, ginsenoside Rg1 increased the expressions of PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) and p-AMPK in glucose deprivation treated H9c2 cells. Reducing the expression of aldolase in H9c2 cells inhibited ginsenoside Rg1′s actions on PINK1 and p-AMPK. Further, the nutritional stress mice were used to verify the mechanisms obtained in vitro. Ginsenoside Rg1 increased the expressions of aldolase, p-AMPK, and PINK1 in starved mice heart. Taken together, our results reveal that ginsenoside Rg1 limits nutritional stress-induced H9c2 cells injury by regulating the aldolase /AMP-activated protein kinase/PINK1 pathway.     

Morpho-anatomical and physiological responses to waterlogging stress in different barley (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Hordeum vulgare</Emphasis> L.) genotypes

Waterlogging is one of the major stresses limiting crop production worldwide. The understanding of the mechanisms of plant adaptations to waterlogging stress helps improve plant tolerance to stress. In this study, physiological responses and morpho-anatomical adaptations of seven different barley genotypes were investigated under waterlogging stress. The results showed that the waterlogging-tolerant varieties (TX9425, Yerong, TF58) showed less reduction in plant height, SPAD (soil–plant analyses development analyses) value, tillers, shoot and root biomasses than did the waterlogging-sensitive varieties (Franklin, Naso Nijo, TF57). Under waterlogging stress condition, the tolerant genotypes also showed a much larger number of adventitious roots than did the sensitive genotypes. More intercellular spaces and better integrated chloroplast membrane structures were observed in the leaves of the waterlogging-tolerant cultivars, which is likely due to increased ethylene content, decreased ABA content and less accumulation of O₂^.?. The ability to form new adventitious roots and intercellular spaces in shoots can also be used as selection criteria in breeding barley for waterlogging tolerance.     

Use HypE to Hide Association Rules by Adding Items

During business collaboration, partners may benefit through sharing data. People may use data mining tools to discover useful relationships from shared data. However, some relationships are sensitive to the data owners and they hope to conceal them before sharing. In this paper, we address this problem in forms of association rule hiding. A hiding method based on evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO) is proposed, which performs the hiding task by selectively inserting items into the database to decrease the confidence of sensitive rules below specified thresholds. The side effects generated during the hiding process are taken as optimization goals to be minimized. HypE, a recently proposed EMO algorithm, is utilized to identify promising transactions for modification to minimize side effects. Results on real datasets demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively perform sanitization with fewer damages to the non-sensitive knowledge in most cases.     

Comparative Analysis of Endogenous Hormones and Metabolite Profiles in Early-Spring Flowering Plants and Unflowered Plants Revealing the Strategy of Blossom

Journal of Plant Growth Regulation - Early-spring plants are a special type of plant that complete their life cycle promptly in cold, early spring. Very little effort has been made into researching...     

Endoglucanase A from Cellulomonas fimi in which the hinge sequence of human IgA1 is substituted for the linker connecting its two domains is hydrolyzed by IgA proteases from Neisseria gonorrhoeae

The hinge in IgA1 and the linker in endoglucanase A (CenA) are quite similar. The IgA1 hinge is 18 amino acids long and contains only proline, threonine and serine. The linker in CenA is 27 amino acids long and contains only proline, threonine and a single serine. IgA proteases from Neisseria gonorrhoeae cleave Pro-Ser and Pro-Thr bonds within the IgA1 hinge sequence, but they do not attack CenA. When the linker sequence of CenA is replaced with the hinge sequence of IgA1, the hybrid polypeptide is susceptible to the N. gonorrhoeae proteases. It is cleaved within the hinge sequence at the same sites as IgA1.