Cloning and expression of swine myostatin gene and its application in animal immunization trial

An important performance trait target in swine breeding is the percentage of the lean meat within the total consumable pork. China has numerous indige-nous swine breeds, but the percentage of the lean meat percentage is generally low. Thus, increasing the per-centage of the lean meat would improve the pork qual-ity, which would have great importance in the devel-opment of our livestock industry as well as the opti-mization of the consumers’ dietary. Throughout the years researchers have been …     

蓝舌病毒HbC株与不同种系细胞相互作用及群特异性抗原特征

BTV-HbC株和蓝舌病毒标准株BTV-10分别接种在不同种系细胞如猴肾传代细胞(Vero)、人宫颈癌细胞(Hela)和小鼠神经胶质瘤细胞(C6)等细胞株上,比较研究了BTV-HbC在不同种系细胞上的增殖特征,BTV-HbC与BTV-10在相同细胞上的复制增殖特征,病毒与细胞相互作用的显微和超微结构特征.用免疫交叉反应研究了BTV-HbC株与BTV-10型标准株之间的血清学关系.本研究结合本室对BTV-HbC株基因组图谱分析和蓝舌病毒群特异性抗原编码基因S7的RT-PCR分析,进一步证实了BTV-HbC株可能是一个新的血清型蓝舌病毒.     

Regulation of Proapoptotic Mammalian ste20–Like Kinase MST2 by the IGF1-Akt Pathway

Background

Hippo, a Drosophila serine/threonine kinase, promotes apoptosis and restricts cell growth and proliferation. Its mammalian homolog MST2 has been shown to play similar role and be regulated by Raf-1 via a kinase-independent mechanism and by RASSF family proteins through forming complex with MST2. However, regulation of MST2 by cell survival signal remains largely unknown.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Using immunoblotting, in vitro kinase and in vivo labeling assays, we show that IGF1 inhibits MST2 cleavage and activation induced by DNA damage through the phosphatidylinosotol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathway. Akt phosphorylates a highly conserved threonine-117 residue of MST2 in vitro and in vivo, which leads to inhibition of MST2 cleavage, nuclear translocation, autophosphorylation-Thr180 and kinase activity. As a result, MST2 proapoptotic and growth arrest function was significantly reduced. Further, inverse correlation between pMST2-T117/pAkt and pMST2-T180 was observed in human breast tumors.

Conclusions/Significance

Our findings demonstrate for the first time that extracellular cell survival signal IGF1 regulates MST2 and that Akt is a key upstream regulator of MST2.     

Cell proliferation is promoted by compressive stress during early stage of chondrogenic differentiation of rat BMSCs

The presence of an appropriate number of viable cells is prerequisite for successive differentiation during chondrogenesis. Chondrogenic differentiation has been reported to be influenced by mechanical stimuli. This research aimed to study the effects of cyclic compressive stress on cell viability of rat bone marrow‐derived MSCs (BMSCs) during chondrogenesis as well as its underlying mechanisms. The results showed that dynamic compression increased cell quantity and viability remarkably in the early stage of chondrogenesis, during which the expression of Ihh, Cyclin D1, CDK4, and Col2α1 were enhanced significantly. Possible signal pathways implicated in the process were explored in our study. MEK/ERK and p38 MAPK were not found to function in this process while BMP signaling seemed to play an important role in the mechanotransduction during chondrogenic proliferation. In conclusion, dynamic compressive stress could enhance cell viability during chondrogenesis, which might be achieved by activating BMP signaling. J. Cell. Physiol. 228: 1935–1942, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Effect of α7nAChR Signaling on T Cells and Macrophages and Their Clinical Implication in the Treatment of Rheumatic Diseases

Neurochemical Research - Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is one of the most common autoimmune disease and until now, the etiology and pathogenesis of RA is not fully understood, although dysregulation of...     

Molecular Characterization of Tree Peony Germplasm Using Sequence-Related Amplified Polymorphism Markers

This study examined 63 tree peony specimens, consisting of 3 wild species and 63 cultivars, using sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) markers for the purpose of detecting genomic polymorphisms. Bulk DNA samples from each specimen were evaluated with 23 SRAP primer pairs. Among the 296 different amplicons, 262 were polymorphic. The maximum parsimony, neighbor-joining, and unweighted pair-group method using arithmetic average trees were largely in congruence. In the three trees, the wild species Paeonia ludlowii and P. delavayi formed separate clusters with strong bootstrap support, and P. ostii was closely related to all cultivars. The cultivars were divided into groups with various corresponding bootstrap values. The genetic similarity among the genotypes ranged from 0.02 to 0.73. These results demonstrate that SRAP markers are effective in detecting genomic polymorphisms in the tree peony and should be useful for linkage map construction and molecular marker assisted selection breeding. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.