Identification of Candidate Biomarkers for Transplant Rejection from Transcriptome Data: A Systematic Review.

Background: Traditional methods for rejection control in transplanted patients are considered invasive, risky, and prone to sampling errors. Using molecular biomarkers as an alternative protocol to biopsies, for monitoring rejection may help to mitigate some of these problems, increasing the survival rates and well-being of patients. Recent advances in omics technologies provide an opportunity for screening new molecular biomarkers to identify those with clinical utility.

Characteristics of the competition among RNAs for the binding of shared miRNAs.

Competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) are RNAs that share common miRNA binding sites and compete with each other for the miRNA association at these sites. The observation of this phenomenon in the cells altered the view of the miRNA target RNAs from molecules that are passively controlled by miRNAs to molecules that also modulate the miRNAs activity. In this review, we build a general profile of ceRNAS characteristics in order to facilitate ceRNAs identification by researchers.

Scaffolds for Artificial miRNA Expression in Animal Cells.

Artificial miRNAs (amiRNAs) are molecules that have been developed to promote gene silencing in a similar manner to naturally occurring miRNAs. amiRNAs are generally constructed by replacing the mature miRNA sequence in the pre-miRNA stem-loop with a sequence targeting a gene of interest. These molecules offer an interesting alternative to silencing approaches that are based on shRNAs and siRNAs because they present the same efficiency as these options and are less cytotoxic.

Secretion of laccase and manganese peroxidase by Pleurotus strains cultivate in solid-state using Pinus spp. sawdust.

Pleurotus species secrete phenol oxidase enzymes: laccase (Lcc) and manganese peroxidase (MnP). New genotypes of these species show potential to be used in processes aiming at the degradation of phenolic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dyes. Hence, a screening of some strains of Pleurotus towards Lcc and MnP production was performed in this work.

Mesenchymal stromal cells from unconventional model organisms.

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are multipotent, plastic, adherent cells able to differentiate into osteoblasts, chondroblasts and adipocytes. MSCs can be isolated from many different body compartments of adult and fetal individuals. The most commonly studied MSCs are isolated from humans, mice and rats.

Reviewing and updating the major molecular markers for stem cells.

Stem cells (SC) are able to self-renew and to differentiate into many types of committed cells, making SCs interesting for cellular therapy. However, the pool of SCs in vivo and in vitro consists of a mix of cells at several stages of differentiation, making it difficult to obtain a homogeneous population of SCs for research. Therefore, it is important to isolate and characterize unambiguous molecular markers that can be applied to SCs.

Production of laccases in submerged process by Pleurotus sajor-caju PS-2001 in relation to carbon and organic nitrogen sources, antifoams and Tween 80.

Some conditions in media composition for laccases production, such as different sources of carbon and organic nitrogen, antifoams and a surfactant, were studied in liquid cultures of Pleurotus sajor-caju strain PS-2001. Cultivation with fructose or glucose as carbon sources produced maximum enzyme activities of 37 and 36 U mL(-1), respectively. When sucrose was present in the medium, the best results were obtained using 5 g L(-1) of this carbohydrate, on the 11th day of the process, attaining laccase titres of 13 U mL(-1).