Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular pathogen that utilizes a type III secretion system to enter mammalian cells and establish an intracellular niche. TARP, the translocated actin recruitment protein, is a chlamydial invasion protein...
This project investigated the effect of hypothermia on the monocyte response with the goal of understanding, which intracellular processes are affected by hypothermia leading to differences in cytokine secretion. A better understanding of the...
Pituitary tumor transforming gene ( PTTG ), also known as securing, is a novel oncogene that is expressed at high levels in most of the tumors analyzed to date. Overexpression of PTTG in mouse fibroblast(NIH 3T3) cells increases cell proliferation,...
The ability of L. pneumophila to cause disease depends on its replication in alveolar macrophages. Infectivity and the expression of various virulence traits is triggered at post exponential growth phase. We show that unlike quiescent macrophages,...
Cancer patients show circadian disruption that increases as disease progresses. Disrupted endocrine and activity rhythms predict early metastatic cancer mortality. Effects of psychological versus biological factors on rhythms are unknown, as are...
Pancreatic islet transplantation is a very promising treatment for type I diabetes. Many clinical trials have failed due to early islet loss and immune rejection. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been demonstrated to be involved in graft damage...
Pancreatic beta cells are extremely vulnerable to the destruction of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). In both type 1 and type 2 diabetes ROS are involved in the loss of U+000DF-cells. We hypothesized that the deficiency in ROS detoxifying system of...
BACKGROUND: Regulated secretion of protein by salivary and other exocrine glands requires correct trafficking of soluble cargo proteins into secretory vesicles. However, the molecular mechanism of sorting in the parotid salivary gland is unknown....
Monophosphoryl Lipid A (MPLA), a derivative of LPS endotoxin, is a TLR4 agonist that displays as little as 0.1-1% as much toxicity as its parent molecule while retaining immunostimulatory properties. We discovered that MPLA activates a TRIF-biased...
Mucin 1 (MUC1) is a plasma membrane-bound glycoprotein that plays a protective role in corneal epithelial cells. Two full-length splice variants of MUCl: MUCl/B and MUCl/A, that differ by the inclusion of 27 bp from intron 1 and a SNP in MUCl/A,...
Pancreatic beta cells are extremely vulnerable to destruction by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). In type 1 diabetes and islet transplantation ROS are thought to be involved in the loss of beta cells. To test the role of antioxidant in islet...
Copper--Physiological effect; Copper in the body; Heart--Hypertrophy
Previous studies have shown that copper (Cu) supplementation at physiologically relevant levels reverses cardiac myocyte hypertrophy induced by phenylephrine (PE), and that this effect was VEGF-dependent. Yet, the amount of VEGF in the media was...
Spinal cord injury (SCI) can be divided into two distinct stages, an initial mechanical impact and a later "secondary injury" resulting from a cascade of cytokines triggering a spreading demyelination and apoptosis of neurons and glia...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an idiopathic pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder associated with various neuropathologies and immunological dysfunctions. Cytokines are regulatory proteins that facilitate communication between the immune and...
Tobacco smoke is a strong and independent risk factor for several chronic systemic diseases and also increases susceptibility to a multitude of bacterial infections, including periodontal infections. Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease...
The immune system is of profound importance for host survival due to its ability to clear many acquired diseases. In case of infections and cancer, disease arises due to under-performance of immune system. Whereas in autoimmunity and...
It has been estimated that 30% of all cancer deaths in the U.S. are associated with obesity. It is well-established that obesity promotes low-grade chronic inflammation, however the mechanisms by which obesity-induced chronic inflammation may...
Exocytosis of intracellular granules is critical for conversion of inactive, circulating neutrophils to fully activated cells. The p38 MAPK pathway plays a central role in neutrophil exocytosis, although its mechanism of action is unknown. We used...
Heart--Hypertrophy; Heart--Physiology; Sugar in the body; Metabolism; Diabetes--Research
Heart failure is recognized as a major cause of death among diabetics. In type I and II diabetes, glucose uptake, glycolysis and pyruvate oxidation are impaired, and fatty acid utilization increases. These alterations in metabolism contribute...
Background: When rat salivary gland cells are cultured in vitro, they dedifferentiate within 24 h. Hypothesis: Growth factors will prevent de-differentiation of primary cultures of parotid gland cells, and they will induce differentiation of ParC5...
