Gene expression analysis of intestinal IL-8, IL-17 A and IL-10 in patients with celiac and inflammatory bowel diseases

Molecular Biology Reports - Celiac disease (CeD) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are accompanied by impaired immune responses. To study the immune regulation of these diseases, we evaluated...     

Correlation Between Vase Life and Biochemical Parameters in Ornamental Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) Affected by Spraying Chemical Materials During the Growth Stages

Journal of Plant Growth Regulation - The study was conducted to investigate the correlation between vase life and biochemical parameters in sunflower. The experiment was arranged in a randomized...     

Programmed death-1 gene polymorphism (PD-1.5 C/T) is associated with colon cancer

Programmed death-1 (PD-1), expressed by activated T cells, is a negative regulator of T lymphocytes. The associations of the immune response-related genes with cancer have been demonstrated. In this study, the PD-1.5 C/T (+7785) polymorphism was investigated in 200 colorectal cancer patients and 200 healthy individuals as controls by nested polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method. The genotype and allele frequencies at PD-1.5 position were not significantly different between control individuals and the overall colorectal cancer patients. However, subdivision of the patients by the location (175 colon cancer and 25 rectal cancer) revealed a significant difference between colon cancer patients and healthy individuals (p=0.026), and between colon and rectal cancer patients (p=0.017). The frequency of the CT genotype was significantly higher in colon cancer patients than in control individuals (58.3% vs. 44.8%, Bonferroni corrected p-value=0.024; OR=1.74; 95% CI=1.15-2.62), and in rectal cancer patients (58.3% vs. 28.0%, Bonferroni corrected p-value=0.012; OR=3.59; 95% CI=1.42-9.04). Characteristics of the patients including age, sex, tumor grade and stage were not associated with the PD-1.5 polymorphism. Our results show a significant association between PD-1.5 polymorphism and colon cancer. Larger numbers of patients are required to investigate comprehensively the association of rectal cancer with PD-1.5 polymorphism.     

Binding of divalent metal ions to calcium-free peroxidase: thermodynamic and kinetic studies

Thermodynamics of binding of divalent metal ions including Ca(2+) , Mg(2+) , Ba(2+) , and Cd(2+) to Ca-free horseradish peroxidase (HRP) enzyme was investigated using UV/VIS spectrophotometry and molecular-mechanic (MM) calculations. According to the obtained binding and thermodynamic parameters, trend of the relative binding affinities of these divalent metal cations was found to be: Ca(2+) >Cd(2+) >Mg(2+) >Ba(2+) . Binding analysis based on Scatchard and Hill models showed positive cooperativity effect between the two distal and proximal binding sites. Furthermore, kinetics of binding and reconstitution process was examined (using relaxation-time method) for binding of Ca(2+) (as the typical metal ion) to Ca-free HRP, which was found a second-order type having a two-step mechanism involving fast formation of Ca-free HRP/1?Ca(2+) as the kinetic intermediate in step 1. Finally, by means of MM calculations, the comparative stability energies were evaluated for binding of M(2+) metal cations to Ca-free HRP. Based on MM calculations, preferential binding of Ca(2+) ion was occurred on distal and proximal binding sites of Ca-free HRP associated with higher stability energies (E(total) ). Indeed, among the divalent metal ions, Ca(2+) with the highest binding affinity (maximum value of K(bin) and minimum value of ΔG$\rm{{_{bin}^{0}}}$), maximum value of exothermic binding enthalpy, and stability energies stabilizes the HRP structure along with an optimized catalytic activity.