Publications by authors named "Masek T"

Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of end-stage kidney disease, and the association between impaired autophagy and kidney structure damage in diabetes is well known. Diets enriched with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been the subject of numerous studies on preventing and treating various metabolic disorders. The results of these studies suggest that n-3 PUFA may have a renoprotective effect, reducing the structural damage to the kidneys associated with DM.

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Background: The increasing quest for effective and safe antiaging skincare solutions has led to a surge in the exploration of natural compounds such as phenolic acids. Despite the proven efficacy of traditional antiaging ingredients like retinol, their associated side effects have necessitated the search for alternatives.

Aims: This study aimed to assess the anti-wrinkle efficacy of a standardized phenolic acids polymer extract (PAPE) from propolis, employing both in vitro and clinical methodologies to explore its suitability as a novel antiaging skincare ingredient for sensitive and nonsensitive skin types.

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Study Question: Which actively translated maternal transcripts are differentially regulated between clinically relevant in vitro and in vivo maturation (IVM) conditions in mouse oocytes and zygotes?

Summary Answer: Our findings uncovered significant differences in the global transcriptome as well as alterations in the translation of specific transcripts encoding components of energy production, cell cycle regulation, and protein synthesis in oocytes and RNA metabolism in zygotes.

What Is Known Already: Properly regulated translation of stored maternal transcripts is a crucial factor for successful development of oocytes and early embryos, particularly due to the transcriptionally silent phase of meiosis.

Study Design, Size, Duration: This is a basic science study utilizing an ICR mouse model, best suited for studying in vivo maturation.

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  • * Researchers created Huh7.5 ADAR1 knockout (KO) cell lines to explore ADAR1's function in liver cells and found that these cells experienced growth arrest and failed to recover after IFN treatment.
  • * Analysis revealed significant changes in the transcriptome and translatome of the KO cells, particularly impacting RNA polymerase III transcription and small RNA levels, indicating ADAR1's vital role in small RNA metabolism and ribosome production.
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Fatty acids (FAs) are of utmost importance in the peripartal period for the development of the central nervous and immune systems of the newborn. The transport of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) through the placenta is considered to be minimal in ruminants. Nevertheless, the cow's FAs are the main source of FAs for the calf during gestation.

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  • Translation is essential for development, particularly during the silenced transcription phase of oocytes and early embryos.
  • A genome-wide translatome analysis revealed that while global protein synthesis decreases during M-phases, the initiation and elongation of translation are activated, showing a dynamic shift in how specific mRNAs are translated.
  • This study provides new insights into gene expression regulation during oocyte meiosis and the first two embryonic mitoses, marking a significant step towards understanding the molecular mechanisms of translation control in early development.
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Carabids (Coleoptera: Carabidae) are abundant predators in ecosystems and serve as pest biocontrol in agroecosystems and forestry. Here we test the impact of thiamethoxam, among the most used neonicotinoids on the consumption rate, locomotion, metabolomics, and oxidative stress level measuring superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in a predatory carabid, Abax parallelus (Duftschmid, 1812), after acute exposure in the laboratory trials, to get additional data that might link the use of pesticides and predation efficiency. Beetles were exposed to increasing concentrations of thiamethoxam by dipping method, and left to feed overnight prior to the assays.

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Biotechnology has emerged as a valuable tool in the development of maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids with enhanced nitrogen (N) use efficiency. Recent work has described the positive effects of an increased and extended expression of the zmm28 transcription factor (Event DP202216) on maize yield productivity.

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  • * The maturation-promoting factor (MPF), made up of CDK1 and Cyclin B1, is crucial for resuming meiosis, but the mechanisms behind its activation are not fully understood.
  • * This study identifies SGK1, a specific kinase expressed in mouse oocytes, as a key player that influences CDK1 activation; inhibiting SGK1 delays meiotic progression, but introducing active CDK1 can reverse this effect, shedding light on how meiosis is regulated.
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  • * The research aimed to analyze the serum metabolome of 12 dogs infected with babesiosis compared to 12 healthy dogs, using advanced chromatography techniques, leading to the identification of 295 metabolites.
  • * Findings revealed various metabolic pathways involved in the disease, highlighting the potential for using metabolomics to better understand host-pathogen interactions and the mechanisms behind babesiosis in dogs.
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The objective of this study was to examine the benefits of different n6/n3 polyunsaturated fatty acid ratios on the lipid metabolism, insulin resistance, and oxidative stress in the adipose tissue of rats fed a high-fructose diet. Male and female rats were divided into four groups: a control group (CON) (n6/n3 ratio ~7), a high-fructose group (HF) (n6/n3 ratio ~7), an N6-HF group (n6/n3 ratio ~50), and the DHA-HF group (n6/n3 ratio ~1, with the addition of docosahexaenoic (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic (EPA) acid). The CON group received plain water and the HF group received 15% fructose in their drinking water.

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Scope: Exposure to a high-fat diet (HFD) from early-life is associated with a testicular metabolic signature link to abnormal sperm parameters up to two generations after exposure in mice. Hereby, this study describes a testicular lipid signature associate with "inherited metabolic memory" of exposure to HFD, persisting up to two generations in mice.

Methods And Results: Diet-challenged mice (n = 36) are randomly fed after weaning with standard chow (CTRL); HFD for 200 days or transient HFD (HFD ) (60 days of HFD + 140 days of standard chow).

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  • The Baeyer-Villiger and Beckmann rearrangements are traditional methods for breaking down ketone derivatives, but they only allow cleavage at the more substituted site and cannot be easily switched to the less-substituted one.
  • A new approach using ketone enolates and commercial alkyl nitrites enables selective fragmentation of ketones into esters and oximes, providing a more versatile option for chemists.
  • This method offers control over cleavage sites through specific enolate formation and allows transformations of natural products, leading to better access to unique dicarbonyl compounds.
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We compared the chemical composition, antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of two propolis extracts: one obtained with nonaqueous polyethylene glycol, PEG 400 (PgEP), and the other obtained with ethanol (EEP) We analyzed the total phenolic content (TPC) and the concentrations of ten markers of propolis antioxidant activity with HPLC-UV: caffeic acid, -coumaric acid, -ferulic acid, -cinnamic acid, kaempferol, apigenin, pinocembrin, chrysin, CAPE, and galangin. Antioxidant activity was tested using DPPH and FRAP assay, and antimicrobial activity was assessed through minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) and minimum biofilm eradication concentration (MBEC) determination. Maceration gave the yield of propolis of 25.

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  • * The study identifies that p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases (p38-MAPKs) are active early in blastocyst development, regulating essential processes like ribosome function and protein translation necessary for PrE differentiation.
  • * Inhibiting p38-MAPK affects PrE development but can be partly reversed by activating mTOR, whereas similar effects from inhibiting the ERK pathway linked to FGF4 are not reversed by mTOR, highlighting p38-MAPK's unique role in PrE development. *
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Propolis is a honeybee product known for its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antimicrobial effects. It is rich in bioactive molecules whose content varies depending on the botanical and geographical origin of propolis. These bioactive molecules have been studied individually and as a part of propolis extracts, as they can be used as representative markers for propolis standardization.

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Regulation of translation is essential for the diverse biological processes involved in development. Particularly, mammalian oocyte development requires the precisely controlled translation of maternal transcripts to coordinate meiotic and early embryo progression while transcription is silent. It has been recently reported that key components of mRNA translation control are short and long noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs).

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The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of high-fat (HF) and cafeteria diet (CAF) diets and sex on the metabolism of important fatty acids in the liver and perirenal fat tissue. Dietary treatments induced changes in the fatty acid profile in comparison to the untreated group, but the characteristic differences between treated groups were also observable. The HF diet induced an increase in the content of C16:1-7 and C18:1-7 in the liver phospholipids (PL) and triglycerides (TG) and perirenal fat tissue compared to the control and CAF diet.

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Childhood obesity is a serious concern associated with ill health later in life. Emerging data suggest that obesity has long-term adverse effects upon male sexual and reproductive health, but few studies have addressed this issue. We hypothesized that exposure to high-fat diet during early life alters testicular lipid content and metabolism, leading to permanent damage to sperm parameters.

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Article Synopsis
  • Increasing maternal age in mammals leads to lower quality oocytes, higher aneuploidy rates, and reduced developmental ability.
  • Research shows that many mRNAs are translated differently in oocytes from older females compared to younger ones, particularly affecting those related to the cell cycle.
  • Specific proteins like CASTOR1 and SGK1 are linked to errors in chromosome alignment during meiosis, indicating that improper translation of proteins at the start of meiosis is a factor in the age-related decline in reproductive success.
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We studied the influence of experimentally induced DM1, in combination with different dietary n6:n3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) ratios on different types of nerve fibers in rat myocardium, in order to reveal whether protective/unfavorable effects of different PUFAs on myocardial function in diabetic patients could be a (partial) repercussion of their effect on the changes in cardiac innervation. The control group (c) and diabetic group (stz) were fed with an n6/n3 ratio of ≈7; the diet of the stz+n6 group had an n6/n3 ratio ≈60, while the diet for the stz+DHA group contained 2.5% of fish oil (containing 16% eicosapentaenoic acid-EPA and 19% docosahexaenoic acid-DHA), n6/n3 ratio of ≈1.

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  • Different stressors, particularly arsenite and heat, lead to distinct SG properties, with differences noted in protein localization and dynamics that may relate to neurodegenerative diseases.
  • The article suggests that SGs formed under heat stress could serve as a transitional model towards understanding the development of irreversible protein aggregates associated with conditions like Alzheimer's and ALS.
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  • Meiotic maturation of oocytes relies on maternal mRNA translation, requiring a new method called Scarce Sample Polysome Profiling (SSP-profiling) for better analysis of polysome-associated transcripts.
  • This method combines sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation with qRT-PCR to quantify rRNAs and is effective for both small and large sample sizes.
  • Using SSP-profiling, researchers explored the translatome of mouse oocytes, discovering 1847 transcripts related to important cellular functions and key steps in meiosis, including those with unknown roles that may contribute to oocyte aneuploidy.
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Vitamin D is a steroid hormone with numerous actions in the organism. There are strong evidences that relate vitamin D deficiency with liver lipid metabolism disturbances, but the mechanism of this action is still unknown. In our previous work we postulated the localization and accumulation of vitamin D receptor (VDR) in membrane of the lipid droplets (LDs) in hepatocytes.

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In diabetic nephropathy (DN), intercellular communication is disrupted. Connexins (Cx) have a crucial role in that process. Dietary ratios and supplementation with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) can alleviate diabetic complications and cause alterations in Cx levels.

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