Polymeric and/or lipid platforms are promising tools for nucleic acid delivery into cells. We previously reported a lipid-polymer nanocarrier, named LipoParticles, consisting of polylactic acid nanoparticles surrounded by cationic lipids, and allowing the addition of mRNA and cationic LAH4-1 peptide at their surface. Although this mRNA platform has shown promising results in vitro in terms of mRNA delivery and translation, the bulk method used to prepare LipoParticles relies on a multistep and time-consuming procedure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe approval of two mRNA vaccines as urgent prophylactic treatments against Covid-19 made them a realistic alternative to conventional vaccination methods. However, naked mRNA is rapidly degraded by the body and cannot effectively penetrate cells. Vectors capable of addressing these issues while allowing endosomal escape are therefore needed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDNA replication in higher eukaryotes initiates at thousands of origins according to a spatio-temporal program. The ATR/Chk1 dependent replication checkpoint inhibits the activation of later firing origins. In the Xenopus in vitro system initiations are not sequence dependent and 2-5 origins are grouped in clusters that fire at different times despite a very short S phase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe application of high-throughput SNP genotyping is a great challenge for many research projects in the plant genetics domain. The GOOD assay for mass spectrometry, Amplifluor and TaqMan are three methods that rely on different principles for allele discrimination and detection, specifically, primer extension, allele-specific PCR and hybridization, respectively. First, with the goal of assessing allele frequencies by means of SNP genotyping, we compared these methods on a set of three SNPs present in the herbicide resistance genes CSR, AXR1 and IXR1 of Arabidopsis thaliana.
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