Progress Toward Complete Life-Cycle Culturing of the Endangered Sunflower Star, .

AbstractUntil recently, the sunflower star, , was a dominant and common predator in a wide variety of benthic habitats in the northeast Pacific. Then, in 2013, its populations began to plummet across its entire range as a result of the spread of a phenomenon known as sea star wasting disease, or sea star wasting. Although dozens of sea star species were impacted by this wasting event, seems to have suffered the greatest losses and is now listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as the first critically endangered sea star.

GSK3β is a key regulator of the ROS-dependent necrotic death induced by the quinone DMNQ.

Signaling pathways controlling necrosis are still mysterious and debated. We applied a shRNA-based viability screen to identify critical elements of the necrotic response. We took advantage from a small molecule (G5) that makes covalent adducts with free thiols by Michael addition and elicits multiple stresses.

The co-existence of transcriptional activator and transcriptional repressor MEF2 complexes influences tumor aggressiveness.

The contribution of MEF2 TFs to the tumorigenic process is still mysterious. Here we clarify that MEF2 can support both pro-oncogenic or tumor suppressive activities depending on the interaction with co-activators or co-repressors partners. Through these interactions MEF2 supervise histone modifications associated with gene activation/repression, such as H3K4 methylation and H3K27 acetylation.

TAp63gamma is required for the late stages of myogenesis.

p53 family members, p63 and p73, play a role in controlling early stage of myogenic differentiation. We demonstrated that TAp63gamma, unlike the other p53 family members, is markedly up-regulated during myogenic differentiation in murine C2C7 cell line. We also found that myotubes formation was inhibited upon TAp63gamma knock-down, as also indicated by atrophyic myotubes and reduction of myoblasts fusion index.