Publications by authors named "Yukawa M"

DNA methylation patterns are inherited from the parental germline to the embryo. In mature sperm, the sites of unmethylated DNA are tightly coupled to sites of histone retention at gene regulatory elements that are implicated in paternal epigenetic inheritance. The timing and mechanism of site-specific DNA demethylation in the male germline currently remains unknown.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Kinesin-5 motor proteins are essential for mitotic spindle formation and maintenance, ensuring accurate chromosome segregation. Human kinesin-5 is highly expressed in various cancer cells but not in nonproliferative tissues; therefore, it is expected to be an attractive target for cancer chemotherapy, with fewer adverse side effects. Many inhibitors have been developed and subjected to clinical trials; however, they have not yet been commercially distributed because of their poor efficacy and frequent drug resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Growth hormone (GH) is an essential factor in enhancing the productivity of animals. In ruminants, L-aspartate (L-Asp) stimulates the secretion of GH; however, the effect of D-Asp on GH remains unknown. Here, we examined the effect of D-Asp on GH secretion in wethers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on analyzing cell-free DNA (cfDNA) to determine its tissue origin, which is important for research and diagnostics, utilizing a new technique called FRAGHA that looks at fragmentation patterns linked to histone modifications.
  • The research demonstrated strong correlations between specific histone modification signals, such as H3K27ac, and various medical conditions, including fetal DNA presence in maternal plasma and liver cancer detection.
  • Machine learning algorithms were employed to improve early detection of liver cancer, showcasing how cfDNA fragmentomics can enhance the effectiveness of liquid biopsies in clinical settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Ketone bodies are metabolites produced during fasting or on a ketogenic diet that have pleiotropic effects on the inflammatory and metabolic aging pathways underpinning frailty in models. Ketone esters (KEs) are compounds that induce hyperketonemia without dietary changes and that may impact physical and cognitive function in young adults. The functional effects of KEs have not been studied in older adults.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Ketone bodies are endogenous metabolites produced during fasting or a ketogenic diet that have pleiotropic effects on aging pathways. Ketone esters (KEs) are compounds that induce ketosis without dietary changes, but KEs have not been studied in an older adult population. The primary objective of this trial was to assess the tolerability and safety of KE ingestion in a cohort of older adults.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Ketone bodies are endogenous metabolites produced during fasting or a ketogenic diet that have pleiotropic effects on aging pathways. Ketone esters (KEs) are compounds that induce ketosis without dietary changes, but KEs have not been studied in an older adult population. The primary objective of this trial was to determine tolerability and safety of KE ingestion in older adults.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bis-octanoyl (R)-1,3-butanediol (BO-BD) is a novel ketone ester (KE) ingredient which increases blood beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) concentrations rapidly after ingestion. KE is hypothesized to have beneficial metabolic effects on health and performance, especially in older adults. Whilst many studies have investigated the ketogenic effect of KE in young adults, they have not been studied in an exclusively older adult population, for whom age-related differences in body composition and metabolism may alter the effects.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A case study detailed the use of negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) for treating an infected fingertip soft tissue defect, which is a relatively newer treatment option that became covered by insurance in Japan in 2010.
  • Despite ongoing antibiotic therapy, the patient's wound healing was slow until NPWT was applied, resulting in improved infection signs and successful tissue healing within 7 weeks.
  • NPWT presents a less complex treatment alternative compared to traditional surgical methods, suggesting that it could be accessible and effective for managing infected fingertip wounds when other options are not viable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Zinc finger and SCAN domain containing 4 (ZSCAN4) protein, expressed transiently in pluripotent stem cells, gametes, and early embryos, extends telomeres, enhances genome stability, and improves karyotypes in mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells. To gain insights into the mechanism of ZSCAN4 function, we identified genome-wide binding sites of endogenous ZSCAN4 protein using ChIP-seq technology in mouse and human ES cells, where the expression of endogenous ZSCAN4 was induced by treating cells with retinoic acids or by overexpressing DUX4. We revealed that both mouse and human ZSCAN4 bind to the TGCACAC motif located in CA/TG microsatellite repeats, which are known to form unstable left-handed duplexes called Z-DNA that can induce double-strand DNA breaks and mutations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Gonadal sex determination is influenced by Sertoli cells in testes and granulosa cells in ovaries, but the role of epigenetics in suppressing female differentiation in testes is not well understood.
  • * In this study, researchers demonstrated that Polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1) is crucial for preventing a female gene regulatory network in Sertoli cells, as its disruption leads to cell proliferation issues and eventual degeneration of adult testes.
  • * The findings reveal that PRC1 suppresses genes necessary for female cell type development through specific chromatin modifications, thus maintaining Sertoli cell identity and preventing ovarian differentiation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The 11th International Fission Yeast Meeting took place at Astel Plaza in Hiroshima, Japan, from May 28th to June 2nd, 2023. This highly anticipated gathering, originally scheduled for May 2021, had been postponed for 2 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers from 21 countries, including 211 overseas and 157 domestic participants (overall gender ratio is roughly 60% male vs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aging profoundly affects immune-system function, promoting susceptibility to pathogens, cancers and chronic inflammation. We previously identified a population of IL-10-producing, T follicular helper-like cells (" "), linked to suppressed vaccine responses in aged mice. Here, we integrate single-cell ( )RNA-seq, scATAC-seq and genome-scale modeling to characterize Tfh10 - and the full CD4 memory T cell ( ) compartment - in young and old mice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In recent years, due to a strong concern about this issue, many studies have been conducted on in-hospital violence directed at medical personnel working in the field of human medicine. However, no such survey has been conducted in veterinary medicine to date. Veterinary nurses play an important role in small animal hospitals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of the enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocol and quantify the impact of each ERAS item on postoperative outcomes.

Methods: We used a generalized linear model to compare 289 colorectal cancer patients treated with the ERAS protocol between June, 2015 and April, 2021, with 99 colorectal cancer patients treated with the conventional colorectal surgery pathway between April, 2014 and June, 2015.

Results: The median length of hospital stay (LOHS) was significantly shorter in the ERAS group, at 9 days (range 3-104 days) vs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The violence and victimization brought by colonization and slavery and justified for over a century by race-based science have resulted in enduring inequities for black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) across the United States. This is particularly true if BIPOC individuals have other intersecting devalued identities. We highlight how such longstanding inequities paved the way for the disproportionate burdens of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among the BIPOC populations across the country and provide recommendations on how to improve COVID-19 mitigation strategies with the goal of eliminating disparities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cell-free extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA) as a distinct topological form from linear DNA has recently gained increasing research interest, with possible clinical applications as a class of biomarkers. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationship between nucleases and eccDNA characteristics in plasma. By using knockout mouse models with deficiencies in deoxyribonuclease 1 (DNASE1) or deoxyribonuclease 1 like 3 (DNASE1L3), we found that cell-free eccDNA in Dnase1l3-/- mice exhibited larger size distributions than that in wild-type mice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

What Is Known And Objective: The use of hypnotics, especially benzodiazepines (BZs), increases the risk of falls. Regarding the association of orexin receptor antagonists with fall risk, consistent results have not been obtained for suvorexant, and studies of lemborexant have not been reported. Therefore, this study investigated whether orexin receptor antagonists, including lemborexant, increase the risk of falls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The details of incompatibility between aripiprazole (ARIP) oral solution and green tea were examined. When the ARIP oral solution was mixed with a commercial PET bottled green tea beverage, the residual rate of ARIP in the mixed solution decreased to 15.7-17.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Salmonella contamination of raw meat-based diets (RMBDs) for pets poses a major public health concern but has not been investigated in Japan.

Objective: To investigate Salmonella contamination in RMBDs for dogs marketed in Japan and the anti-microbial resistance profiles of the Salmonella isolates.

Methods: Sixty commercial RMBD samples were collected in the Okayama and Osaka Prefectures, Japan, between December 2016 and March 2017.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Kinesin-5 family proteins are essential for bipolar spindle assembly to ensure mitotic fidelity. Here, we demonstrate evolutionary functional conservation of kinesin-5 between human and fission yeast. Human Eg5 expressed in the nucleus replaces fission yeast counterpart Cut7.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Although histamine-2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) have been shown to be more likely to cause delirium than proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), these results were not adjusted for potential confounding factors. Accordingly, we investigated whether H2RAs and PPIs are risk factors for delirium, even when adjusting for other risk factors by analyzing adverse drug event reports compiled in the post-marketing stages of drugs provided by the Japanese regulatory authorities.

Method: We analyzed 577,431 reports in the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report database from April 2004 to July 2020.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Treatment strategies for distant organ metastasis have changed markedly since the concept of oligometastasis was introduced. The perception that distant organ metastasis is a systemic disease and not eligible for local therapy is now a thing of the past. Therefore, the present report details a case of postoperative solitary liver metastasis from esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), which achieved a clinical complete response to chemotherapy with cisplatin and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) followed by stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cells form a bipolar spindle during mitosis to ensure accurate chromosome segregation. Proper spindle architecture is established by a set of kinesin motors and microtubule-associated proteins. In most eukaryotes, kinesin-5 motors are essential for this process, and genetic or chemical inhibition of their activity leads to the emergence of monopolar spindles and cell death.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF