Evolutionary conservation and modulation of a juvenile growth-regulating genetic program.

Body size varies enormously among mammalian species. In small mammals, body growth is typically suppressed rapidly, within weeks, whereas in large mammals, growth is suppressed slowly, over years, allowing for a greater adult size. We recently reported evidence that body growth suppression in rodents is caused in part by a juvenile genetic program that occurs in multiple tissues simultaneously and involves the downregulation of a large set of growth-promoting genes.

A set of imprinted genes required for normal body growth also promotes growth of rhabdomyosarcoma cells.

Introduction: In many normal tissues, proliferation rates decline postnatally, causing somatic growth to slow. Previous evidence suggests that this decline is due, in part, to decline in the expression of growth-promoting imprinted genes including Mest, Plagl1, Peg3, Dlk1, and Igf2. Embryonal cancers are composed of cells that maintain embryonic characteristics and proliferate rapidly in childhood.

Spatial and temporal regulation of gene expression in the mammalian growth plate.

Growth plates are spatially polarized and structured into three histologically and functionally distinct layers-the resting zone (RZ), proliferative zone (PZ), and hypertrophic zone (HZ). With age, growth plates undergo functional and structural senescent changes including declines of growth rate, proliferation rate, growth plate height and cell number. To explore the mechanisms responsible for spatially-associated differentiation and temporally-associated senescence of growth plate in an unbiased manner, we used microdissection to collect individual growth plate zones from proximal tibiae of 1-week rats and the PZ and early hypertrophic zones of growth plates from 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-week rats and analyzed gene expression using microarray.

An extensive genetic program occurring during postnatal growth in multiple tissues.

Mammalian somatic growth is rapid in early postnatal life but then slows and eventually ceases in multiple tissues. We hypothesized that there exists a postnatal gene expression program that is common to multiple tissues and is responsible for this coordinate growth deceleration. Consistent with this hypothesis, microarray analysis identified more than 1600 genes that were regulated with age (1 vs.

Cordycepin induced eryptosis in mouse erythrocytes through a Ca2+-dependent pathway without caspase-3 activation.

Cordyceps sinensis is a prized traditional Chinese medicine and its major component cordycepin is found to have anti-leukemia activities. However, its cytotoxicity in erythrocytes was unclear. To examine the effect of cordycepin on the induction of eryptosis (an apoptosis-like process in enucleated erythrocytes), flow cytometric assays based on membrane integrity and asymmetry were employed.

The nuclear tubular invaginations are dynamic structures inside the nucleus of HeLa cells.

Nuclear tubules (NTs) were found in the nucleus of HeLa cells. Although no function has been ascribed to these structures, our previous data has shown that they are the sites of Ca(2+) release with mitochondria shuttled around. In the present study, we further characterized these NTs through different fluorescent dye-labeling and red fluorescent protein transfection experiments.