Sufficiently activated mature natural killer cells derived from peripheral blood mononuclear cells substantially enhance antitumor activity.

Background: Peripheral blood-derived natural killer (NK) cells spontaneously lyse tumor cells without prior sensitization. However, NK cells in peripheral blood (PBNK cells) are in a resting state and exhibit inhibitory phenotypes and impaired cytotoxicity. Thus, strengthening the cytotoxic effector function of PBNK cells and improving NK cell expansion in vitro for a convenient allogeneic therapy are essential.

MicroRNA-23a inhibits melanoma cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in mice through a negative feedback regulation of sdcbp and the MAPK/ERK signaling pathway.

Melanoma is the main cause of death associated with skin cancer. Surgical resection and adjuvant therapy are currently effective treatments, but the recurrence rate is very high. The understanding of microRNA (miR) dynamics after surgical resection of melanoma is essential to accurately explain the changes in the recurrence of melanoma.

Single-Homology-Arm Linear DNA Recombination by the Nonhomologous End Joining Pathway as a Novel and Simple Gene Inactivation Method: a Proof-of-Concept Study in sp. Strain DQ12-45-1b.

Nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) is critical for genome stability because of its roles in double-strand break repair. Ku and ligase D (LigD) are the crucial proteins in this process, and strains expressing Ku and LigD can cyclize linear DNA Here, we established a proof-of-concept single-homology-arm linear DNA recombination for gene inactivation or genome editing by which cyclization of linear DNA by NHEJ could be used to generate nonreplicable circular DNA and could allow allelic exchanges between the circular DNA and the chromosome. We achieved this approach in sp.

A critical combination of operating parameters can significantly increase the electrotransformation efficiency of a gram-positive Dietzia strain.

Dietzia spp. have broad potential applications in industries. However, genetic manipulation of these species is obstructed by their low transformation efficiency, which is in the range of 10(4)colony-forming units (CFU)μg(-1) exogenous DNA.

Diverse alkane hydroxylase genes in microorganisms and environments.

AlkB and CYP153 are important alkane hydroxylases responsible for aerobic alkane degradation in bioremediation of oil-polluted environments and microbial enhanced oil recovery. Since their distribution in nature is not clear, we made the investigation among thus-far sequenced 3,979 microbial genomes and 137 metagenomes from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments. Hundreds of diverse alkB and CYP153 genes including many novel ones were found in bacterial genomes, whereas none were found in archaeal genomes.