Anti-inflammatory,anti-apoptotic,and antioxidant actions of Middle Eastern Phoenix dactylifera extract on mercury-induced hepatotoxicity in vivo

Molecular Biology Reports - Mercuric chloride (MC) is a complex substance which is capable to produce free radicals. Middle Eastern Phoenix dactylifera (MEPD) is a flowering plant of palm family...     

Correction to: Isolation,Characterization, and Expression Profiling of Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase Gene from Tall Fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) (FaNDPK) under Salt Stress

Plant Molecular Biology Reporter - The original version of this article unfortunately contained some mistakes in article Title and Table 1.     

Adipose tissue-derived stem cells upon decellularized ovine small intestine submucosa for tissue regeneration: An optimization and comparison method

The extracellular matrix of different mammalian tissues is commonly used as scaffolds in the field of tissue engineering. One of these tissues, which has frequently been studied due to its structural and biological features, is the small intestine submucosal membrane. These research are mainly done on the porcine small intestine. However, a report has recently been published about a scaffold produced from the submucosal layer of the ovine small intestine. In the present study, ovine small intestine submucosal (OSIS) was decellularized in a modified manner and its histological, morphological, and biomechanical properties were studied. Decellularization was performed in two phases: physical and chemical. In this method, a chloroform-methanol mixture, enzymatic digestion, and a constant dose of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) was used in the least agitation time and its histological property and biocompatibility were evaluated in the presence of adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSCs); furthermore, ADSCs were isolated with a simple method (modified physical washing non-enzymatic isolation). The results were showed that the use of OSIS could be effective and operative. Mechanical properties, histological structure and shape, and glycosaminoglycan content were preserved. In the SDS-treated group, more than 90% of the native cells of tissue were deleted, and also in this group, no toxicity was observed and cell proliferation was supported, compared to the untreated group. Therefore, our results indicate that ADSCs seeded on OSIS scaffold could be used as a new approach in regenerative medicine as hybrid or hydrogel application.     

The effect of different salts (heavy metals) on the mycelium growth of Nematophagus fungi

Environmental pollution in addition to direct damage on plant growth, with the destruction of biological control agents, causes indirect damage to plants. The aim of this research was to study the effects of different concentrations (0, 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 ppm) of heavy metals including Ag, Co, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Pb and Zn on the mycelial growth and to assess the fungicidal or fungistatic effects of these salts on five Nematophagus fungi including Trichoderma harzianum (T8), Trichoderma virens (T21), Trichoderma hamatum (T9), Pochonia chlamydosporia var. chlamydosporia and Arthrobotrys oligospora. The results show that Ag, Co, Cu, Fe and Hg could stop the mycelium growth of all fungi, but Mn, Pb and Zn cannot inhibit the growth of these fungi completely. Among the first group, Hg and Cu stopped the growth of fungi even in 500 ppm. Among these metals that inhibit the growth of fungi, Cu has fungistatic effect and others have fungicide effect. The experiment was conducted in vitro condition, using potato dextrose agar (PDA) under complete randomised design with four replications. The data of mycelium growth were recorded at seven days after inoculation at 25 ± 2°C.     

Change in membrane fatty acid compositions and cold-induced responses in chickpea

Plant cells often increase cold tolerance by reprogramming their genes expression which results in adjusted metabolic alternations, a process enhanced under cold acclimation (CA) phase. In present study, we assessed the changes of membrane fatty acid compositions and defense machine (like antioxidative enzymes) along with damage indexes like electrolyte leakage index (ELI) and malondialdehyde (MDA) during CA, cold stress (CS) and recovery (R) phases in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Results showed an increase in unsaturated fatty acids ratio compare to saturated ones which is a sign of cold tolerance especially after CA phase. Antioxidant enzymes had an important role during CA and R phases while CS affected their activity which can be a sign for associating other metabolites or enzymes activities to create cold tolerance in plants. To investigation of enzymes assay under experimental treatments, the expression pattern of some enzymes including superoxide dismutase (sod), catalase (cat) and lipoxygenase (lox) was studied using quantitative real time PCR. LOX activity has shown a bilateral behavior: a positive relation with membrane damage index in CA and an interesting link with double bond index (DBI) in CS indicating probably its role in secondary metabolites like jasmonic acid signaling pathway. It was suggested that increased DBI and low LOX activity under CS could be a reason for plant cold tolerance.     

Cytokine gene polymorphism and graft-versus-host disease: a survey in Iranian bone marrow transplanted patients

Graft versus host disease (GVHD) is a major complication of bone marrow transplantation (BMT). Numerous studies have shown the potential role of cytokine genotypes in the occurrence of GVHD. In this retrospective, case–control study we aimed to investigate the association between 13 cytokine genes and acute GVHD (aGVHD) after HLA-identical sibling BMT in 91 Iranian subjects. Negative association was found between aGVHD and donor IL-10/GCC haplotype or donor IL-4Ra-A allele in the population study. When compared within the leukemia subgroup, we observed positive association between recipient IL-1α ?889/C allele and aGVHD. Also there were negative association between recipient IL-10/CAA haplotype and donor IL-4Ra/A allele and development of aGVHD. Among the different genotypes only donor IL-4Ra and donor IL-12 showed significant association. We conclude that several cytokine polymorphisms are positively and negatively associated with aGVHD in Iranian HLA matched siblings, of which IL-4Ra and IL-12 may play important roles.     

ATR kinase activation in G1 phase facilitates the repair of ionizing radiation-induced DNA damage

The kinase ATR is activated by RPA-coated single-stranded DNA generated at aberrant replicative structures and resected double strand breaks. While many hundred candidate ATR substrates have been identified, the essential role of ATR in the replicative stress response has impeded the study of ATR kinase-dependent signalling. Using recently developed selective drugs, we show that ATR inhibition has a significantly more potent effect than ATM inhibition on ionizing radiation (IR)-mediated cell killing. Transient ATR inhibition for a short interval after IR has long-term consequences that include an accumulation of RPA foci and a total abrogation of Chk1 S345 phosphorylation. We show that ATR kinase activity in G1 phase cells is important for survival after IR and that ATR colocalizes with RPA in the absence of detectable RPA S4/8 phosphorylation. Our data reveal that, unexpectedly, ATR kinase inhibitors may be more potent cellular radiosensitizers than ATM kinase inhibitors, and that this is associated with a novel role for ATR in G1 phase cells.     

Spectroscopic and DFT investigation of interactions between cyclophosphamide and aspirin with lysozyme as binary and ternary systems

Multi-spectroscopic and density functional theory (DFT) calculations was used to study the interaction between cyclophosphamide (CYP) and aspirin (ASA) with lysozyme (LYS). The experimental results showed that fluorescence quenching of LYS by drug was a result of the formation of drug–LYS complex; static quenching was confirmed to result in fluorescence quenching. Modified Stern–Volmer plots of interaction between CYP and ASA with protein in the binary and ternary systems were used to determine the binding parameters. Molecular distances between the donor (LYS) and acceptor (CYP and ASA) for all systems were estimated according to Forster’s theory. The quantitative analysis obtained by CD spectra suggested that the presence of ASA and CYP decreased the α-helical content of LYS and induced the destabilizing of it. Theoretical studies on the interaction between LYS with ASA and CYP have been carried out using DFT at the B3LYP/6-31G level in the solvent phase. Binding energy of the mentioned complexes was calculated. It showed that tryptophan (Trp) 62 had the most affinity toward ASA and CYP. Analyzing the calculated results revealed that the five member ring of Trp has a key role in interaction of LYS with ASA and CYP.     

Normalization of miRNA qPCR high-throughput data: a comparison of methods

Low-density quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) arrays are often used to profile expression patterns of microRNAs in various biological milieus. To achieve accurate analysis of expression of miRNAs, non-biological sources of variation in data should be removed through precise normalization of data. We have systematically compared the performance of 19 normalization methods on different subsets of a real miRNA qPCR dataset that covers 40 human tissues. After robustly modeling the mean squared error (MSE) in normalized data, we demonstrate lower variability between replicates is achieved using various methods not applied to high-throughput miRNA qPCR data yet. Normalization methods that use splines or wavelets smoothing to estimate and remove Cq dependent non-linearity between pairs of samples best reduced the MSE of differences in Cq values of replicate samples. These methods also retained between-group variability in different subsets of the dataset.