Development of a comprehensive detection method for medicinal and toxic plant species.

Pharmacologically active ingredients in plants can cause significant morbidity through their increasingly common use in herbal alternative medicines and dietary supplements. Monitoring consumer products for the presence of toxic plants is encumbered by the lack of rapid and specific assays. To create a sensitive, reliable, fast, and broad-spectrum assay for medicinal or toxic plant species, we tested multiplexed ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA), which requires partial genomic DNA sequences from species of plants that are not well represented in currently available genetic databases.

Toluene diisocyanate colocalizes with tubulin on cilia of differentiated human airway epithelial cells.

Toluene diisocyanate (TDI), a highly reactive industrial chemical with widespread use in the manufacture of polyurethane and plastics, is the leading cause of occupational asthma associated with chemical exposure. We report the effects of TDI vapor (20, 100, 500, 1000 ppb) in vitro on differentiated human bronchial epithelial cells. Increased mucus was observed by electron microscopy at all TDI concentrations.

EGF induces the expression of matrilysin in the human prostate adenocarcinoma cell line, LNCaP.

Background: Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are regulated both positively and negatively at the transcriptional level by a variety of growth factors, oncogenes, and tumor promoters. Induction of the MMP, matrilysin, by epidermal growth factor (EGF) was investigated in a human prostate cancer cell line.

Methods: Secreted protein and messenger RNA were detected using Western and Northern methods, respectively.

Interleukin-1beta secreted from monocytic cells induces the expression of matrilysin in the prostatic cell line LNCaP.

Matrilysin is a matrix metalloprotease that is overexpressed in cancer cells of epithelial origin and in normal tissues during events involving matrix remodeling such as the cycling endometrium. We previously observed that inflamed ductule and acinar epithelia in the prostate also overexpress matrilysin. The presence of infiltrating macrophages in these areas prompted us to determine if factors secreted from monocytes could induce matrilysin expression in a human prostatic cell line.