Moderate Exercise Prevents Functional Remodeling of the Anterior Pituitary Gland in Diet-Induced Insulin Resistance in Rats: Role of Oxidative Stress and Autophagy.

A sustained elevation of glucocorticoid production, associated with the establishment of insulin resistance (IR) could add to the deleterious effects of the IR state. The aim of this study is to analyze the consequences of long-term feeding with a sucrose-rich diet (SRD) on Pomc/ACTH production, define the underlying cellular processes, and determine the effects of moderate exercise (ME) on these parameters. Animals fed a standard chow with or without 30% sucrose in the drinking water were subjected to ME.

Tandem repeat variation in human and great ape populations and its impact on gene expression divergence.

Tandem repeats (TRs) are stretches of DNA that are highly variable in length and mutate rapidly. They are thus an important source of genetic variation. This variation is highly informative for population and conservation genetics.

Aurora A Kinase Contributes to a Pole-Based Error Correction Pathway.

Chromosome biorientation, where sister kinetochores attach to microtubules (MTs) from opposing spindle poles, is the configuration that best ensures equal partitioning of the genome during cell division. Erroneous kinetochore-MT attachments are commonplace but are often corrected prior to anaphase. Error correction, thought to be mediated primarily by the centromere-enriched Aurora B kinase (ABK), typically occurs near spindle poles; however, the relevance of this locale is unclear.

Genomic instability: Crossing pathways at the origin of structural and numerical chromosome changes.

Genomic instability leads to a wide spectrum of genetic changes, including single nucleotide mutations, structural chromosome alterations, and numerical chromosome changes. The accepted view on how these events are generated predicts that separate cellular mechanisms and genetic events explain the occurrence of these types of genetic variation. Recently, new findings have shed light on the complexity of the mechanisms leading to structural and numerical chromosome aberrations, their intertwining pathways, and their dynamic evolution, in somatic as well as in germ cells.

Link between aneuploidy and chromosome instability.

Aneuploidy is widely acknowledged as a leading cause of miscarriage and birth defects in humans, and is generally known to be deleterious to the survival of individual cells. However, aneuploidy is also ubiquitous in cancer and is found to arise as an adaptive response in certain contexts. This dichotomy of aneuploidy has attracted the interest of researchers for over a century, but many studies have reached conflicting conclusions.

A Burkholderia pseudomallei colony variant necessary for gastric colonization.

Unlabelled: Diverse colony morphologies are a hallmark of Burkholderia pseudomallei recovered from infected patients. We observed that stresses that inhibit aerobic respiration shifted populations of B. pseudomallei from the canonical white colony morphotype toward two distinct, reversible, yet relatively stable yellow colony variants (YA and YB).

Modelling chromosome dynamics in mitosis: a historical perspective on models of metaphase and anaphase in eukaryotic cells.

Mitosis is the process by which the genome is segregated to form two identical daughter cells during cell division. The process of cell division is essential to the maintenance of every form of life. However, a detailed quantitative understanding of mitosis has been difficult owing to the complexity of the process.

Thioredoxin targets fundamental processes in a methane-producing archaeon, Methanocaldococcus jannaschii.

Thioredoxin (Trx), a small redox protein, controls multiple processes in eukaryotes and bacteria by changing the thiol redox status of selected proteins. The function of Trx in archaea is, however, unexplored. To help fill this gap, we have investigated this aspect in methanarchaea--strict anaerobes that produce methane, a fuel and greenhouse gas.

Functional motifs in biochemical reaction networks.

The signal-response characteristics of a living cell are determined by complex networks of interacting genes, proteins, and metabolites. Understanding how cells respond to specific challenges, how these responses are contravened in diseased cells, and how to intervene pharmacologically in the decision-making processes of cells requires an accurate theory of the information-processing capabilities of macromolecular regulatory networks. Adopting an engineer's approach to control systems, we ask whether realistic cellular control networks can be decomposed into simple regulatory motifs that carry out specific functions in a cell.

myo-inositol oxygenase offers a possible entry point into plant ascorbate biosynthesis.

Two biosynthetic pathways for ascorbate (l-ascorbic acid [AsA]; vitamin C) in plants are presently known, the mannose/l-galactose pathway and an l-GalUA pathway. Here, we present molecular and biochemical evidence for a possible biosynthetic route using myo-inositol (MI) as the initial substrate. A MI oxygenase (MIOX) gene was identified in chromosome 4 (miox4) of Arabidopsis ecotype Columbia, and its enzymatic activity was confirmed in bacterially expressed recombinant protein.