Hedgehog Signaling in Papillary Fibroblasts Is Essential for Hair Follicle Regeneration during Wound Healing.

Patients suffering from large scars such as burn victims not only encounter aesthetic challenges but also ongoing itching or pain that substantially deteriorates their quality of life. Skin appendages such as hair follicles rarely regenerate within the healing wound. Because they are crucial for skin homeostasis and the lack thereof constitutes one of the main limitations to scarless wound healing, their regeneration represents a major objective for regenerative medicine.

CXCL5 as Regulator of Neutrophil Function in Cutaneous Melanoma.

Chemokines mold the tumor microenvironment by recruiting distinct immune cell populations, thereby strongly influencing disease progression. Previously, we showed that CXCL5 expression is upregulated in advanced stages of primary melanomas, which correlates with the presence of neutrophils in the tumor. The analysis of neutrophil populations in various tissues revealed a distinct phenotype of tumor-associated neutrophils.

CXCL5 Facilitates Melanoma Cell-Neutrophil Interaction and Lymph Node Metastasis.

Chemokines influence tumor metastasis by targeting tumor, stromal, and hematopoietic cells. Characterizing the chemokine mRNA expression profile of human primary melanoma samples, we found CXCL5 significantly up-regulated in stage T4 primary melanomas when compared to thin melanomas (T1 stage). To characterize the role of CXCL5 in melanoma progression, we established a metastasizing murine xenograft model using CXCL5-overexpressing human melanoma cells.

HO-1 inhibits preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation at the onset of obesity via ROS dependent activation of Akt2.

Excessive accumulation of white adipose tissue (WAT) is a hallmark of obesity. The expansion of WAT in obesity involves proliferation and differentiation of adipose precursors, however, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we used an unbiased transcriptomics approach to identify the earliest molecular underpinnings occuring in adipose precursors following a brief HFD in mice.

Engineering of pyranose dehydrogenase for increased oxygen reactivity.

Pyranose dehydrogenase (PDH), a member of the GMC family of flavoproteins, shows a very broad sugar substrate specificity but is limited to a narrow range of electron acceptors and reacts extremely slowly with dioxygen as acceptor. The use of substituted quinones or (organo)metals as electron acceptors is undesirable for many production processes, especially of food ingredients. To improve the oxygen reactivity, site-saturation mutagenesis libraries of twelve amino acids around the active site of Agaricus meleagris PDH were expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.