Effect of salinity on stomatal number,size and opening in barley Genotypes

Salinity had a varying effect on stomatal frequency, size and pore in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). This variation in stomatal frequency, size and pore under salinity offers a scope of selecting cultivars with lesser increase in stomatal number to avoid excessive loss of water due to transpiration without effecting photosynthetic efficiency.     

Effect of Nucleotides and Related Compounds on Glutamine Synthetase Activity in Chick Embryo Retina: A Biochemical and Immunohistochemical Study

Abstract: The effect of a number of nucleotides and related compounds on glutamine synthetase (GS) induction in retina from 12-day chick embryo was studied with both biochemical and immunohistochemical techniques. A number of these compounds gave rise to GS activity comparable to that induced by treatment with cortisol, which is known to give rise to precocious induction of the enzyme in this system. Of the cyclic nucleotides examined, cAMP (0.5-1.2 × 10^?3 M) gave essentially no increase in GS activity. In contrast, dibutyryl cAMP (0.8 × 10^?3 M) had a more significant effect on GS activity, as did 8-bromo-cAMP and cGMP at the same concentration. The activity elicited by these nucleotides was generally half that obtained by treatment with 2.8 × 10^?7 M-cortisol for the same length of time, 8-Bromo-cGMP (0.8 × 10^?3 M) had an effect comparable to the aforementioned concentration of cortisol. Since phosphodiesterase activity is minimal in the chick retina at 12 days of development, addition of isobutylmethylxanthine (1 × 10^?5 M) to this system had, as would be expected, little effect on GS activity. Of the noncyclic compounds, 8-bromoguanosine often gave rise to GS activity comparable to that obtained with cortisol. The other compounds (8-bromo-5′-GMP, guanosine, adenosine, and 5′-AMP) generally had less of an effect on GS. In general, the degree of staining in the immunohistochemical localization of GS corresponded well with the biochemical results and showed the enzyme to be present in regions consistent with the distribution of Muller cells and their processes. Thin-layer chromatography and radioimmunoassay of the nucleotides did not show any steroid impurity in any of the compounds used in the study, even when determinations were carried out at five times the concentration of nucleotide used in the experiments.     

Opioid Peptides: An Overview of Functional Significance

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - Bioactive peptides have been reported to exhibit opioid-like activity and are termed as opioid peptides. Either these are produced...     

Functional characterization of full-length and 5′ deletion fragments of Citrus sinensis-derived constitutive promoters in Nicotiana benthamiana

In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology - Plant - Full-length and 5′ deletion fragments of three constitutively expressed gene promoters identified from the Citrus sinensis L. genome...     

SARS-CoV-2 cell receptor gene ACE2 -mediated immunomodulation in breast cancer subtypes

The recent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has impacted the world severely. The binding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and its intake by the host cell is a necessary step for infection. ACE2 has garnered widespread therapeutic possibility as it is entry/interactive point for SARS-CoV-2, responsible for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and providing a critical regulator for immune modulation in various disease. Patients with suffering from cancer always being on the verge of being immune compromised therefore gaining knowledge about how SARS-CoV-2 viruses affecting immune cells in human cancers will provides us new opportunities for preventing or treating virus-associated cancers. Despite COVID-19 pandemic got center stage at present time, however very little research being explores, which increase our knowledge in context with how SARS-CoV-2 infection affect cancer a cellular level. Therefore, in light of the ACE-2 as an important contributor of COVID-19 global, we analyzed correlation between ACE2 and tumor immune infiltration (TIL) level and the type markers of immune cells were investigated in breast cancer subtypes by using TIMER database. Our findings shed light on the immunomodulatory role of ACE2 in the luminal A subtype which may play crucial role in imparting therapeutic resistance in this cancer subtype.     

Sterol and oxysterol synthases near the ciliary base activate the Hedgehog pathway

Vertebrate Hedgehog signals are transduced through the primary cilium, a specialized lipid microdomain that is required for Smoothened activation. Cilia-associated sterol and oxysterol lipids bind to Smoothened to activate the Hedgehog pathway, but how ciliary lipids are regulated is incompletely understood. Here we identified DHCR7, an enzyme that produces cholesterol, activates the Hedgehog pathway, and localizes near the ciliary base. We found that Hedgehog stimulation negatively regulates DHCR7 activity and removes DHCR7 from the ciliary microenvironment, suggesting that DHCR7 primes cilia for Hedgehog pathway activation. In contrast, we found that Hedgehog stimulation positively regulates the oxysterol synthase CYP7A1, which accumulates near the ciliary base and produces oxysterols that promote Hedgehog signaling in response to pathway activation. Our results reveal that enzymes involved in lipid biosynthesis in the ciliary microenvironment promote Hedgehog signaling, shedding light on how ciliary lipids are established and regulated to transduce Hedgehog signals.