Sepsis is defined as a life-threatening multiorgan dysfunction caused by dysregulated inflammatory response to infection. It remains the primary cause of death from infection if not diagnosed and treated promptly. Therefore, a better understanding of the mechanism for resolving inflammation is needed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLy6C monocytes migrate to injured sites and induce inflammation in the acute phase of tissue injury. However, once the causes of tissue injury are eliminated, monocyte-derived macrophages contribute to the resolution of inflammation and tissue repair. It remains unclear whether the emergence of these immunoregulatory macrophages is attributed to the phenotypic conversion of inflammatory monocytes in situ or to the recruitment of bone marrow-derived regulatory cells de novo.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNumerous types of cancer cells migrate into extracellular tissues. This phenomenon is termed invasion, and is associated with poor prognosis in cancer patients. In this study, we demonstrated that filamin B (FLNb), an actin-binding protein, is highly expressed in cancer cell lines that exhibit high invasiveness, with a spindle morphology, into 3D collagen matrices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMuscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAchRs) are critical components of the cholinergic system, which is the key regulator of both the central and peripheral nervous systems in mammals. Interestingly, several components of the cholinergic system, including mAchRs and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), have recently been found to be expressed in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells and human placenta. These results raise the intriguing possibility that mAchRs play physiological roles in the regulation of early embryogenesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: An in vitro elicitation test employing human high-affinity IgE receptor-expressing rat mast cell lines appears to be a useful method for measuring mast cell activation using a patient's IgE and an allergen; however, such cell lines are sensitive to human complements in the serum. We have recently developed a new luciferase-reporting mast cell line (RS-ATL8) to detect IgE crosslinking-induced luciferase expression (EXiLE) with relatively low quantities of serum IgE.
Methods: A total of 30 patients suspected of having egg white (EW) allergy were subjected to an oral food challenge (OFC) test; then, the performances of EW-specific serum IgE (CAP-FEIA), EW-induced degranulation, and EXiLE responses in RS-ATL8 cells were compared using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.
The stress kinase mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 7 (MKK7) is a specific activator of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), which controls various physiological processes, such as cell proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, and migration. Here we show that genetic inactivation of MKK7 resulted in an extended period of oscillation in circadian gene expression in mouse embryonic fibroblasts. Exogenous expression in cultured mammalian cells of an MKK7-JNK fusion protein that functions as a constitutively active form of JNK induced phosphorylation of PER2, an essential circadian component.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn most species, solar light is both a DNA-damaging agent and the key entraining stimulus for the endogenous circadian clock. The zebrafish is an attractive vertebrate system in which to study the influence of light on gene expression because the DNA repair proteins and circadian oscillators in this species are light-responsive. At the molecular level, light treatment of zebrafish cells induces the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCircadian clocks are intrinsic, time-tracking systems that endow organisms with a survival advantage. Studies of animal models and human tumor samples have revealed that the disruption of circadian rhythms is an important endogenous factor that can contribute to mammalian cancer development. The core of the circadian clock mechanism is a cell-autonomous and self-sustained oscillator system mediated by a transcription/translation-based negative feedback loop that relies on positive and negative elements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUV radiation causes a number of harmful events including growth delay, cell death and ultimately cancer. The reversal of such effects by concomitant exposure to visible light is a conserved mechanism which has been uncovered in many multi-cellular organisms. Here we show that light-dependent UV-tolerance is a cell autonomous phenomenon in zebrafish.
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