In blood coagulation, the serine protease thrombin is a multifaceted enzyme that interacts with multiple proteins. Thrombin utilizes two anion binding exosites (ABE-I and II) to supplement binding to fibrinogen and to the platelet receptor GpIbα,...
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...
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...
Recent advances in understanding the molecular mechanisms of mutagenesis indicate that most mutations are dependent on the activity of translesion synthesis DNA polymerases. The impact of reducing the level of these polymerases on mutagenesis and...
Oxidative stress-induced immunosuppression could be due to a decrease in CD4 + T lymphocyte activation or proliferation. 4-Hydroxynonenal (HNE), an end product of lipid peroxidation, and its protein adducts act as markers of oxidative stress. In...
O -linked β-N-acetylglucosamine ( O -GlcNAc) is an inducible, dynamically cycling, and reversible post-translational modification of serine/threonine amino acid residues of nucleocytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins. O -GlcNAc transferase (OGT)...
Heart failure is the most frequent cause of mortality in western countries. Currently, there is no cure treatment for heart failure and the long term survival rate following heart failure is poor, with one third of patients dying within a year of...
Colon (Anatomy)--Cancer--Genetic aspects; Cancer cells--Mathematical models
Research over the past twenty five years has led to the development of the hypothesis that colorectal cancer is caused by the accumulation of mutations in tumor suppressor genes and proto-oncogenes. The last ten years has also revealed that the...
Nuclear Factor of Activated T-cells (NFAT) is a calcium-responsive transcription factor that orchestrates immune response and cardiovascular development. NFAT is also present in neurons and glia from the Central Nervous System (CNS) where it...
Guanine-rich oligonucleotides (GROs) are being developed as a novel anticancer agents. GROs exhibit potent antiproliferative properties against several malignant cell lines and in established in vivo tumor models. In a recent Phase I clinical trial...
Rising concerns about dependency on fossil fuels in the 21st century has sparked a growth in research for renewable energy sources. One renewable energy production process of interest is the reduction of cellulose into fermentable sugars by means...
Several technical and economic obstacles currently hamper the industrial development of ethanol from biomass. One of the key bottlenecks is the slow kinetics of the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose, and the subsequent rate reduction as the...
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...
Drug delivery systems; Curcumin--Therapeutic use--Administration
Curcumin, a plant derived compound has shown significant potency against various chronic diseases like cancer in cell culture and animal studies. However, the introduction of this compound into clinical setting is limited by its poor oral...
Embryonic development requires the orchestration of temporally precise genetic events that culminate in the formation of a complete organism. The molecular mechanisms responsible for ontogenesis are regulated by environmental and somatic factors in...
20S proteasome, essential component of protein degradation mechanism, is important to maintain homeostasis. Its malfunctions have been associated with several pathological conditions. This study presents an extensive study of murine cardiac 20S...
Heart--Hypertrophy; Hydrogen sulfide--Therapeutic use
Background: Although matrix metalloproteinase (MMPs) and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMPs) play a vital role in tumor angiogenesis and TIMP-3 causes apoptosis, their role in cardiac angiogenesis is unknown. Interestingly, a disruption...
The goals of this dissertation is to further the understanding of the roles of two genes identified by differential display polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) of cat visual cortex as candidate genes to play a role in visual cortical plasticity....
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...
Recent studies indicate post-translational deacetylation by members of the superfamily of histone deacetylase complexes (HDACs) is necessary for oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) differentiation into mature oligodendrocytes (OLs). However, it...
