Post-transcriptional regulation has emerged as a key mechanism for regulating stem cell renewal and differentiation, which is essential for understanding tissue regeneration and homeostasis. Poly(A)-binding proteins are a family of RNA-binding proteins that play a vital role in post-transcriptional regulation by controlling mRNA stability and protein synthesis. The involvement of poly(A) binding proteins in a wide range of cellular functions is increasingly being investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Reg Health Southeast Asia
September 2024
Background: We measured the incidence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and re-infections in an adult community-based cohort in southern India.
Methods: We conducted a 2-year follow-up on 1229 participants enrolled between May and October 2021. Participants provided vaccination histories, weekly saliva samples, and blood samples at 0, 6, 12, and 24 months.
Regeneration involves a highly coordinated interplay of intricate cellular processes, enabling living organisms to renew and repair themselves, from individual cells to entire ecosystems. Further, regeneration offers profound insights into developmental biology, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Development and Regeneration (CMMDR) 2024 conference, which took place at the Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence and University (India), gathered together an international array of researchers studying a wide variety of organisms across both plant and animal kingdoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The study aimed to identify a quantitative signature of circulating small non-coding RNAs (sncRNAs) as a biomarker for pulmonary tuberculosis disease (active-TB/ATB) and explore their regulatory roles in host-pathogen interactions and disease progression.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study recruiting subjects diagnosed with active-TB (drug-sensitive and drug-resistant) and healthy controls. Sera samples were collected and utilized for preparing small RNA libraries.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive and irreversible brain disorder, which can occur either sporadically, due to a complex combination of environmental, genetic, and epigenetic factors, or because of rare genetic variants in specific genes (familial AD, or fAD). A key hallmark of AD is the accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) and Tau hyperphosphorylated tangles in the brain, but the underlying pathomechanisms and interdependencies remain poorly understood. Here, we identify and characterise gene expression changes related to two fAD mutations (A79V and L150P) in the Presenilin-1 (PSEN1) gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Fragile-X Mental Retardation Protein (FMRP) is an RNA binding protein that regulates translation of mRNAs essential for synaptic development and plasticity. FMRP interacts with a specific set of mRNAs, aids in their microtubule-dependent transport and regulates their translation through its association with ribosomes. However, the biochemical role of FMRP's domains in forming neuronal granules and associating with microtubules and ribosomes is currently undefined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtracellular matrix (ECM) is an important component of stem cell niche. Remodeling of ECM mediated by ECM regulators, such as matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) plays a vital role in stem cell function. However, the mechanisms that modulate the function of ECM regulators in the stem cell niche are understudied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDev Biol
August 2022
Planarians have a remarkable ability to undergo whole-body regeneration. Successful regeneration outcome is determined by processes like polarity establishment at the wound site, which is followed by pole (organizer) specification. Interestingly, these determinants are almost exclusively expressed by muscles in these animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWiley Interdiscip Rev RNA
January 2023
Expansion segments (ESs) are multinucleotide insertions present across phyla at specific conserved positions in eukaryotic rRNAs. ESs are generally absent in bacterial rRNAs with some exceptions, while the archaeal rRNAs have microexpansions at regions that coincide with those of eukaryotic ESs. Although there is an increasing prominence of ribosomes, especially the ribosomal proteins, in fine-tuning gene expression through translation regulation, the role of rRNA ESs is relatively underexplored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlanarians are free-living flatworms that emerged as a crucial model system to understand regeneration and stem cell biology. The ability to purify neoblasts, the adult stem cell population of planaria, through fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) has tremendously increased our understanding of pluripotency, specialization, and heterogeneity. To date, the FACS-based purification methods for neoblasts relied on nuclear dyes that discriminate proliferating cells (>2N), as neoblasts are the only dividing somatic cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic heart muscle disease with preserved or increased ejection fraction in the absence of secondary causes. Mutations in the sarcomeric protein-encoding genes predominantly cause HCM. However, relatively little is known about the genetic impact of signalling proteins on HCM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe commitment of hematopoietic multipotent progenitors (MPPs) toward a particular lineage involves activation of cell type-specific genes and silencing of genes that promote alternate cell fates. Although the gene expression programs of early-B and early-T lymphocyte development are mutually exclusive, we show that these cell types exhibit significantly correlated microRNA (miRNA) profiles. However, their corresponding miRNA targetomes are distinct and predominated by transcripts associated with natural killer, dendritic cell, and myeloid lineages, suggesting that miRNAs function in a cell-autonomous manner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMacrophages are highly responsive to the environmental cues and are the primary responders to tissue stress and damage. While much is known about the role of macrophages during inflammatory disease progression; the initial series of events that set up the inflammation remains less understood. In this study, we use next generation sequencing (NGS) of embryonic skin macrophages and the niche cells - skin epithelia and stroma in the epidermis specific knockout of integrin beta 1 (Itgβ1) model to uncover specific roles of each cell type and identify how these cell types communicate to initiate the sterile inflammatory response.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFrontotemporal dementia type 3 (FTD3), caused by a point mutation in the charged multivesicular body protein 2B (CHMP2B), affects mitochondrial ultrastructure and the endolysosomal pathway in neurons. To dissect the astrocyte-specific impact of mutant CHMP2B expression, we generated astrocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and confirmed our findings in CHMP2B mutant mice. Our data provide mechanistic insights into how defective autophagy causes perturbed mitochondrial dynamics with impaired glycolysis, increased reactive oxygen species, and elongated mitochondrial morphology, indicating increased mitochondrial fusion in FTD3 astrocytes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDelhi, the national capital of India, experienced multiple severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreaks in 2020 and reached population seropositivity of >50% by 2021. During April 2021, the city became overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases and fatalities, as a new variant, B.1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe continued resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic with multiple variants underlines the need for diagnostics that are adaptable to the virus. We have developed toehold RNA-based sensors across the SARS-CoV-2 genome for direct and ultrasensitive detection of the virus and its prominent variants. Here, isothermal amplification of a fragment of SARS-CoV-2 RNA coupled with activation of our biosensors leads to a conformational switch in the sensor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFO-Glycans on cell surfaces play important roles in cell-cell, cell-matrix and receptor-ligand interaction. Therefore, glycan-based interactions are important for tissue regeneration and homeostasis. Free-living flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea, because of its robust regenerative potential, is of great interest in the field of stem cell biology and tissue regeneration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability to respond to light has profoundly shaped life. Animals with eyes overwhelmingly rely on their visual circuits for mediating light-induced coordinated movements. Building on previously reported behaviors, we report the discovery of an organized, eye-independent (extraocular), body-wide photosensory framework that allows even a head-removed animal to move like an intact animal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVinculin, a mechanotransducer associated with both adherens junctions (AJs) and focal adhesions (FAs), plays a central role in force transmission through cell-cell and cell-substratum contacts. We generated the conditional knockout (cKO) of vinculin in murine skin that results in the loss of bulge stem cell (BuSC) quiescence and promotes continual cycling of the hair follicles. Surprisingly, we find that the AJs in vinculin cKO cells are mechanically weak and impaired in force generation despite increased junctional expression of E-cadherin and α-catenin.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFtRNA-derived fragments (tRFs) have recently gained a lot of scientific interest due to their diverse regulatory roles in several cellular processes. However, their function in dynamic biological processes such as development and regeneration remains unexplored. Here, we show that tRFs are dynamically expressed during planarian regeneration, suggesting a possible role for these small RNAs in the regulation of regeneration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransfer RNA (tRNA)-derived fragments (tRFs) are an emerging class of conserved small non-coding RNAs that play important roles in post-transcriptional gene regulation. High-throughput sequencing of multiple biological samples have identified heterogeneous species of tRFs with distinct functionalities. These small RNAs have garnered a lot of scientific attention due to their ubiquitous expression and versatility in regulating various biological processes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Vertebrate cranial neural crest cells (CNCCs) are multipotent, proximal to the source CNCC form the cranial ganglia. Distally, in the pharyngeal arches, they give rise to the craniofacial skeleton and connective tissues. Fate choices are made as CNCC pattern into distinct destination compartments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComplex molecular cross talk between stromal cells and the leukemic cells in bone marrow is known to contribute significantly towards drug-resistance. Here, we have identified the molecular events that lead to stromal cells mediated therapy-resistance in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Our work demonstrates that stromal cells downregulate miR-23a-5p levels in leukemic cells to protect them from the chemotherapy induced apoptosis.
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