Publications by authors named "E Shibata"

Despite the high frequency of pregnancies complicated by abnormal glucose metabolism associated with obesity, methylmercury (MeHg) metabolism in pregnant women with abnormal glucose metabolism is unclear. We aimed to elucidate the MeHg tissue distribution in obese female mice with abnormal glucose metabolism and their fetuses. Female C57BL/6J mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) or a standard diet (Ctrl) for 12 weeks and mated.

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Unilateral hand movements alter the excitability of the ipsilateral primary motor cortex (ipsi-M1) and contralateral spinal motoneurons. Although this excitability increases during complex, high muscle-activity movements, few studies have examined the excitability of ipsi-M1 and contralateral spinal motoneurons during complex movements while accounting for muscle activity. This study investigated the excitability of ipsi-M1 and contralateral spinal motoneurons during complex and simple movement tasks with comparable muscle activity between the two tasks.

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The six subunit Origin Recognition Complex (ORC) is a DNA replication initiator that also promotes heterochromatinization in some species. A multi-omics study in a human cell line with mutations in three subunits of ORC, reveals that the subunits bind to DNA independent of each other rather than as part of a common six-subunit ORC. While DNA-bound ORC2 was seen to compact chromatin and attract repressive histone marks, the activation of chromatin and protection from repressive marks was seen at a large number of sites.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to investigate why pregnant women with glucose intolerance often have large infants, focusing on amino and fatty acid transport in the placenta, beyond just glucose transport.
  • Researchers analyzed postpartum placental tissues from 101 eligible deliveries, finding higher expression levels of certain transporters (LAT1 and placenta-FABPpm) in women with glucose intolerance compared to those without.
  • The results suggest that, despite controlled blood sugar levels, managing other nutrients like amino acids and fatty acids in glucose-intolerant pregnancies is crucial for fetal growth.
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The six subunit Origin Recognition Complex (ORC) loads excess MCM2-7 on chromosomes to promote initiation of DNA replication and is believed to be important for origin specification. Mapping of origins in cancer cell lines engineered to delete three of the subunits, , or shows that specific origins are still used and are mostly at the same sites in the genome as in wild type cells. The few thousand origins that were up-regulated in the absence of ORC suggest that GC/TA skewness and simple repeat sequences facilitate, but are not essential for, origin selection in the absence of the six-subunit ORC.

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