Background: Germline nuclear RNAi in is a transgenerational gene-silencing pathway that leads to H3K9 trimethylation (H3K9me3) and transcriptional silencing at the target genes. H3K9me3 induced by either exogenous double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) or endogenous siRNA (endo-siRNA) is highly specific to the target loci and transgenerationally heritable. Despite these features, the role of H3K9me3 in siRNA-mediated transcriptional silencing and inheritance of the silencing state at native target genes is unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfiltrating leukocytes are exposed to a wide range of tissue elasticities. While we know the effects of substrate elasticity on acute inflammation via the study of neutrophil migration, we do not know its effects on leukocytes that direct chronic inflammatory events. Here, we studied morphology and motility of macrophages, the innate immune cells that orchestrate acute and chronic inflammation, on polyacrylamide hydrogels that mimicked a wide range of tissue elasticities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF