Considering TWEAK as a target for therapy in renal and vascular injury

TWEAK is a cytokine of the TNF superfamily that activates the Fn14 receptor. TWEAK may regulate cell proliferation, cell death, cell differentiation, angiogenesis and inflammation. The expression of TWEAK and Fn14 is increased during vascular and renal injury. Inflammatory cytokines increase Fn14 receptor expression in tubular and vascular smooth muscle cells. Moreover, TWEAK induces tubular cell apoptosis under proinflammatory conditions. TWEAK itself contributes to renal and vascular inflammation by promoting chemokine and inflammatory cytokine secretion. Confirmation of its role in acute kidney injury and atherosclerotic lesions formation came from functional studies in experimental animal models. The available evidence suggests that TWEAK might be a target for therapeutic intervention in renal and vascular injury and its role in different forms of tissue damage should be further explored.     

Pax‐6 is expressed early in the differentiation of a corneal epithelial model system

Pax‐6 is a regulatory gene with a major role during visual system development, but its association with corneal epithelial differentiation is not clearly established. Using the RCE1‐(5T5) cell line, which mimics corneal epithelial differentiation, we analyzed Pax‐6 biological role. Immunostaining of proliferating colonies and confluent sheets showed that Pax‐6‐positive cells were also K3 keratin‐positive, suggesting that Pax‐6 is expressed in differentiating cells. Pax‐6 mRNA was barely expressed in early cell cultures; but after confluence, its levels raised up to fivefold as demonstrated by Northern blot and RT‐qPCR. The raise in Pax‐6 expression preceded for 9 h the increase in LDH‐H and LDH‐M mRNAs, previously shown as early markers of corneal epithelial cell differentiation. The full‐length mRNAs encoding for the two major Pax‐6 isoforms were found at very low levels in proliferating cells, and abundantly expressed in the confluent stratified epithelia; Pax‐6 mRNA was 2‐ to 2.5‐fold more abundant than Pax‐6(5a) mRNA. The ectopic expression of Pax‐6 or Pax‐6(5a) decreased proliferative ability leading to the formation of abortive, non‐proliferative colonies. In contrast, culture conditions that delay or block corneal epithelial cell differentiation reduced or inhibited the expression of Pax‐6. Collectively, results show that Pax‐6 is the earlier differentiation marker expressed by corneal epithelial cells, and open the possibility for a major role of Pax‐6 as the main driver of the differentiation of corneal epithelial cells. J. Cell. Physiol. 220: 348–356, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Leishmania (Viannia) panamensis: An in vitro assay using the expression of GFP for screening of antileishmanial drug

Promastigotes of Leishmania (Viannia) panamensis were successfully transfected with p6.5-egfp to express green fluorescent protein. The transfectants remained infective to macrophages, providing an in vitro model for screening antileishmanial drugs. This was demonstrated by flow cytometry of macrophage-associated GFP after exposure of infected cultures to known antileishmanial drugs, i.e. amphotericin B and glucantime^®. Fluorescence of GFP diminished progressively from infected cells with increasing drug concentrations used in both cases. The availability of this fluorescent assay for infection of macrophages by L. (V.) panamensis facilitates drug discovery program for the Viannia species, which differ significantly from those of the Leishmania subgenus.     

康氏木霉REMI突变株的差异表达蛋白分析（简报）

纤维素占植物干重的35%-50%,是地球上分布最广、含量最丰富的碳水化合物,它的利用与转化对于解决目前世界能源危机、粮食短缺、环境污染等问题具有十分重要的意义.     

Automics: an integrated platform for NMR-based metabonomics spectral processing and data analysis

Background  

Spectral processing and post-experimental data analysis are the major tasks in NMR-based metabonomics studies. While there are commercial and free licensed software tools available to assist these tasks, researchers usually have to use multiple software packages for their studies because software packages generally focus on specific tasks. It would be beneficial to have a highly integrated platform, in which these tasks can be completed within one package. Moreover, with open source architecture, newly proposed algorithms or methods for spectral processing and data analysis can be implemented much more easily and accessed freely by the public.     

Characterization of polymorphic microsatellite markers in the brine shrimp Artemia (Branchiopoda, Anostraca)

The brine shrimp Artemia is a complex genus containing sexual species and parthenogenetic lineages. Artemia franciscana is native to America and its cysts (diapausing eggs) are used worldwide as a food source in aquaculture. As a consequence, this anostracan has become an invasive species in many hypersaline aquatic ecosystems of other continents. Parthenogenetic Artemia lineages occur only in the Old World. Ten and five microsatellite markers were developed to characterize two populations for A. franciscana and two populations for diploid parthenogenetic Artemia, respectively. For A. franciscana the number of alleles ranged from 11 to 58 per locus, while for parthenogens the number of alleles ranged from three to 10. The levels of heterozygosity in A. franciscana and in parthenogens ranged from 0.115 to 0.976 and from 0.000 to 0.971, respectively. These microsatellite loci showed a high population assignment power, which will be useful for future studies of population genetics and invasive processes in Artemia.