Background: Gastric cancer is one of the global health concerns. A series of studies on the stomach have confirmed the role of the microbiome in shaping gastrointestinal diseases. Delineation of microbiome signatures to distinguish chronic gastritis from gastric cancer will provide a non-invasive preventative and treatment strategy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant development is continually fine-tuned based on environmental factors. How environmental perturbations are integrated into the developmental programs and how poststress adaptation is regulated remains an important topic to dissect. Vegetative to reproductive phase change is a very important developmental transition that is complexly regulated based on endogenous and exogenous cues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants can be primed by a stress cue to mount a faster or stronger activation of defense mechanisms upon subsequent stress. A crucial component of such stress priming is the modified reactivation of genes upon recurring stress; however, the underlying mechanisms of this are poorly understood. Here, we report that dozens of Arabidopsis thaliana genes display transcriptional memory, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere are 21 heat shock factor (HSF) homologs in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), of which members of class A1 (HSFA1a/HSFA1b/HSFA1d/HSFA1e) play the major role in activating the transcription of heat-induced genes, including HSFA2. Once induced, HSFA2 becomes the dominant HSF and is able to form heterooligomeric complexes with HSFA1. However, whether HSFA2 could function independently as a transcription regulator in the absence of the HSFA1s was undetermined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe heat stress (HS) response in eukaryotes is mainly regulated by heat shock factors (HSFs). Genetic disruption of the master HSF gene leads to dramatically reduced HS response and thermotolerance in several model organisms. However, it is not clear whether organisms devoid of the master regulator can still acclimate to heat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Arabidopsis, there are four homologs of class A1 heat shock factor (HSFA1) genes, which likely encode the master regulators of heat shock response (HSR). However, previous studies with double knockout (KO) mutants were unable to confirm this point probably due to functional redundancy. Here, we generated a quadruple KO (QK) and four triple KO mutants to dissect their functions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant temperature-induced lipocalins (TILs) have been shown to be responsive to heat stress (HS), but the nature of this response was unknown. In this study, a reverse genetic approach was taken to elucidate the role of Arabidopsis TIL1 (At5g58070) in thermotolerance. A T-DNA knock-out line of TIL1 (til1-1) showed severe defects in basal (BT) and acquired thermotolerance (AT), which could be complemented by introducing the wild-type gene.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe expression of heat shock proteins (Hsps) induced by nonlethal heat treatment confers acquired thermotolerance (AT) to organisms against subsequent challenges of otherwise lethal temperature. After the stress signal is removed, AT gradually decays, with decreased Hsps during recovery. AT of sufficient duration is critical for sessile organisms such as plants to survive repeated heat stress in their environment, but little is known regarding its regulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants and animals share similar mechanisms in the heat shock (HS) response, such as synthesis of the conserved HS proteins (Hsps). However, because plants are confined to a growing environment, in general they require unique features to cope with heat stress. Here, we report on the analysis of the function of a novel Hsp, heat-stress-associated 32-kD protein (Hsa32), which is highly conserved in land plants but absent in most other organisms.
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