Articles

Giant group I intron in a mitochondrial genome is removed by RNA back-splicing

The mitochondrial genomes of mushroom corals (Corallimorpharia) are remarkable for harboring two complex group I introns; ND5-717 and COI-884. How these autocatalytic RNA elements interfere with mitochondrial ...

Authors: Sylvia Ighem Chi, Mikael Dahl, Åse Emblem and Steinar D. Johansen

Exploration of carbohydrate binding behavior and anti-proliferative activities of Arisaema tortuosum lectin

Lectins have come a long way from being identified as proteins that agglutinate cells to promising therapeutic agents in modern medicine. Through their specific binding property, they have proven to be anti-ca...

Authors: Kshema Thakur, Tarnjeet Kaur, Manpreet Kaur, Rachna Hora and Jatinder Singh

Characterization of cadmium-responsive MicroRNAs and their target genes in maize (Zea mays) roots

Current research has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) play vital roles in plant response to stress caused by heavy metals such as aluminum, arsenic, cadmium (Cd), and mercury. Cd has become one of the most hazard...

Authors: Jian Gao, Mao Luo, Hua Peng, Fabo Chen and Wenbo Li

Identification and validation of reference genes for real-time quantitative RT-PCR analysis in jute

With the availability of genome sequences, gene expression analysis of jute has drawn considerable attention for understanding the regulatory mechanisms of fiber development and improving fiber quality. Gene e...

Authors: Md. Sabbir Hossain, Rasel Ahmed, Md. Samiul Haque, Md. Monjurul Alam and Md. Shahidul Islam

Small nucleolar RNA Sf-15 regulates proliferation and apoptosis of Spodoptera frugiperda Sf9 cells

Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) function in guiding 2′-O-methylation and pseudouridylation of ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) and small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs). In recent years, more and more snoRNAs have been found to play ...

Authors: Bo Wu, Lei Huang, Wujie Qiu, Xiao Liu, Yawen Shen, Yiping Lu, Zonglin Yang, Xinmei Li, Bin Cui, Shidong Xu, Huili Qiao, Reng Qiu, Lunguang Yao, Yunchao Kan and Dandan Li

Key genes differential expressions and pathway involved in salt and water-deprivation stresses for renal cortex in camel

Camels possess the characteristics of salt- and drought-resistances, due to the long-time adaption to the living environment in desert. The camel resistance research on transcriptome is rare and deficient, esp...

Authors: Yu Cao, Dong Zhang and Huanmin Zhou

Development of a novel selection/counter-selection system for chromosomal gene integrations and deletions in lactic acid bacteria

The underlying mechanisms by which probiotic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) enhance the health of the consumer have not been fully elucidated. Verification of probiotic modes of action can be achieved by using sin...

Authors: Winschau F. Van Zyl, Leon M. T. Dicks and Shelly M. Deane

Selection of reference genes for the quantitative real-time PCR normalization of gene expression in Isatis indigotica fortune

Isatis indigotica, a traditional Chinese medicine, produces a variety of active ingredients. However, little is known about the key genes and corresponding expression profiling involved in the biosynthesis pathwa...

Authors: Renjun Qu, Yujing Miao, Yingjing Cui, Yiwen Cao, Ying Zhou, Xiaoqing Tang, Jie Yang and Fangquan Wang

MEF2A alters the proliferation, inflammation-related gene expression profiles and its silencing induces cellular senescence in human coronary endothelial cells

Myocyte enhancer factor 2A (MEF2A) plays an important role in cell proliferation, differentiation and survival. Functional deletion or mutation in MEF2A predisposes individuals to cardiovascular disease mainly...

Authors: Yujuan Xiong, Lin Wang, Wenyi Jiang, Lihua Pang, Weihua Liu, Aiqun Li, Yun Zhong, Wenchao Ou, Benrong Liu and Shi-ming Liu

Transcriptomic responses to grazing reveal the metabolic pathway leading to the biosynthesis of domoic acid and highlight different defense strategies in diatoms

A major cause of phytoplankton mortality is predation by zooplankton. Strategies to avoid grazers have probably played a major role in the evolution of phytoplankton and impacted bloom dynamics and trophic ene...

Authors: Sara Harðardóttir, Sylke Wohlrab, Ditte Marie Hjort, Bernd Krock, Torkel Gissel Nielsen, Uwe John and Nina Lundholm

RNA sequencing, selection of reference genes and demonstration of feeding RNAi in Thrips tabaci (Lind.) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae)

Thrips tabaci is a severe pest of onion and cotton. Due to lack of information on its genome or transcriptome, not much is known about this insect at the molecular level. To initiate molecular studies in this ins...

Authors: Satnam Singh, Mridula Gupta, Suneet Pandher, Gurmeet Kaur, Neha Goel, Pankaj Rathore and Subba Reddy Palli

A fragment activity assay reveals the key residues of TBC1D15 GTPase-activating protein (GAP) in Chiloscyllium plagiosum

GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) with a TBC (Tre-2/Bub2/Cdc16) domain architecture serve as negative regulators of Rab GTPases. The related crystal structure has been studied and reported by other members of ...

Authors: Yangyang Jin, Guodong Lin, Yanna Chen, Yinghua Ge, Ruofeng Liang, Jia Wu, Jianqing Chen, Dan Wang, Hengbo Shi, Hui Fei and Zhengbing Lv

HexA is required for growth, aflatoxin biosynthesis and virulence in Aspergillus flavus

Woronin bodies are fungal-specific organelles whose formation is derived from peroxisomes. The former are believed to be involved in the regulation of mycotoxins biosynthesis, but not in their damage repair fu...

Authors: Jun Yuan, Ding Li, Ling Qin, Jiaojiao Shen, Xiaodong Guo, Elisabeth Tumukunde, Mingzhu Li and Shihua Wang

Genome-wide identification of brain miRNAs in response to high-intensity intermittent swimming training in Rattus norvegicus by deep sequencing

Physical exercise can improve brain function by altering brain gene expression. The expression mechanisms underlying the brain’s response to exercise still remain unknown. miRNAs as vital regulators of gene ex...

Authors: Yanhong Zhao, Anmin Zhang, Yanfang Wang, Shuping Hu, Ruiping Zhang and Shuaiwei Qian

Graphene oxide down-regulates genes of the oxidative phosphorylation complexes in a glioblastoma

Recently different forms of nanographene were proposed as the material with high anticancer potential. However, the mechanism of the suppressive activity of the graphene on cancer development remains unclear. ...

Authors: Maciej Szmidt, Adrian Stankiewicz, Kaja Urbańska, Sławomir Jaworski, Marta Kutwin, Mateusz Wierzbicki, Marta Grodzik, Beata Burzyńska, Monika Góra, André Chwalibog and Ewa Sawosz

MiRNAs differentially expressed in skeletal muscle of animals with divergent estimated breeding values for beef tenderness

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs of approximately 22 nucleotides, highly conserved among species, which modulate gene expression by cleaving messenger RNA target or inhibiting translation. MiRNAs ar...

Authors: Berna I. G. Kappeler, Luciana C. A. Regitano, Mirele D. Poleti, Aline S. M. Cesar, Gabriel C. M. Moreira, Gustavo Gasparin and Luiz L. Coutinho

The Dictyostelium discoideum homologue of Twinkle, Twm1, is a mitochondrial DNA helicase, an active primase and promotes mitochondrial DNA replication

DNA replication requires contributions from various proteins, such as DNA helicases; in mitochondria Twinkle is important for maintaining and replicating mitochondrial DNA. Twinkle helicases are predicted to a...

Authors: Ashley Harman and Christian Barth

Matrix association region/scaffold attachment region (MAR/SAR) sequence: its vital role in mediating chromosome breakages in nasopharyngeal epithelial cells via oxidative stress-induced apoptosis

Oxidative stress is known to be involved in most of the aetiological factors of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Cells that are under oxidative stress may undergo apoptosis. We have previously demonstrated that...

Authors: Sang-Nee Tan, Sai-Peng Sim and Alan S. B. Khoo

Molecular analysis of NPAS3 functional domains and variants

NPAS3 encodes a transcription factor which has been associated with multiple human psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. In mice, deletion of Npas3 was found to cause alterations in neurodevelopment, as w...

Authors: Leiah M. Luoma and Fred B. Berry

Integration of transcriptome and proteome profiles in glioblastoma: looking for the missing link

Glioblastoma (GB) is the most common and aggressive tumor of the brain. Genotype-based approaches and independent analyses of the transcriptome or the proteome have led to progress in understanding the underly...

Authors: Jean-Michel Lemée, Anne Clavreul, Marc Aubry, Emmanuelle Com, Marie de Tayrac, Jean Mosser and Philippe Menei

Analyses of changes in myocardial long non-coding RNA and mRNA profiles after severe hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation via RNA sequencing in a rat model

Ischemia–reperfusion injury has been proven to induce organ dysfunction and death, although the mechanism is not fully understood. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have drawn wide attention with their important ...

Authors: Lin Lin, Zhengfei Yang, Guanghui Zheng, Yongxun Zhuansun, Yue Wang, Jianguo Li, Rui Chen and Wanchun Tang

Coincidence cloning recovery of Brucella melitensis RNA from goat tissues: advancing the in vivo analysis of pathogen gene expression in brucellosis

Brucella melitensis bacteria cause persistent, intracellular infections in small ruminants as well as in humans, leading to significant morbidity and economic loss worldwide. The majority of experiments on the tr...

Authors: Paola M. Boggiatto, Daniel Fitzsimmons, Darrell O. Bayles, David Alt, Catherine E. Vrentas and Steven C. Olsen

Positive cofactor 4 (PC4) contributes to the regulation of replication-dependent canonical histone gene expression

Core canonical histones are required in the S phase of the cell cycle to pack newly synthetized DNA, therefore the expression of their genes is highly activated during DNA replication. In mammalian cells, this...

Authors: Aleksandra Brzek, Marlena Cichocka, Jakub Dolata, Wojciech Juzwa, Daniel Schümperli and Katarzyna Dorota Raczynska

Evaluation of suitable reference genes for qRT-PCR normalization in strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) under different experimental conditions

Strawberry has received much attention due to its nutritional value, unique flavor, and attractive appearance. The availability of the whole genome sequence and multiple transcriptome databases allows the grea...

Authors: Yunting Zhang, Xiaorui Peng, Yi Liu, Yali Li, Ya Luo, Xiaorong Wang and Haoru Tang

Laser capture microdissection for transcriptomic profiles in human skin biopsies

The acquisition of reliable tissue-specific RNA sequencing data from human skin biopsy represents a major advance in research. However, the complexity of the process of isolation of specific layers from fresh-...

Authors: Silvia Santoro, Ignazio Diego Lopez, Raffaella Lombardi, Andrea Zauli, Ana Maria Osiceanu, Melissa Sorosina, Ferdinando Clarelli, Silvia Peroni, Daniele Cazzato, Margherita Marchi, Angelo Quattrini, Giancarlo Comi, Raffaele Adolfo Calogero, Giuseppe Lauria and Filippo Martinelli Boneschi

Targeting miR-9 in gastric cancer cells using locked nucleic acid oligonucleotides

Gastric cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide. Recently, it has been demonstrated that gastric cancer cells display a specific miRNA expression profile, with increasing eviden...

Authors: Joana Filipa Lima, Joana Carvalho, Inês Pinto-Ribeiro, Carina Almeida, Jesper Wengel, Laura Cerqueira, Céu Figueiredo, Carla Oliveira and Nuno Filipe Azevedo

Quantitative profiling of BATF family proteins/JUNB/IRF hetero-trimers using Spec-seq

BATF family transcription factors (BATF, BATF2 and BATF3) form hetero-trimers with JUNB and either IRF4 or IRF8 to regulate cell fate in T cells and dendritic cells in vivo. While each combination of the heter...

Authors: Yiming K. Chang, Zheng Zuo and Gary D. Stormo

pH-mediated upregulation of AQP1 gene expression through the Spi-B transcription factor

Bicarbonate-based peritoneal dialysis (PD) fluids enhance the migratory capacity and damage-repair ability of human peritoneal mesothelial cells by upregulating AQP1. However, little is known about the underly...

Authors: Yihui Zhai, Hong Xu, Qian Shen, Franz Schaefer, Claus P. Schmitt, Jing Chen, Haimei Liu, Jialu Liu and Jiaojiao Liu

A protocol for custom CRISPR Cas9 donor vector construction to truncate genes in mammalian cells using pcDNA3 backbone

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) RNA-guided adaptive immune systems are found in prokaryotes to defend cells from foreign DNA. CRISPR Cas9 systems have been modified and employ...

Authors: Neftali Vazquez, Lilia Sanchez, Rebecca Marks, Eduardo Martinez, Victor Fanniel, Alma Lopez, Andrea Salinas, Itzel Flores, Jesse Hirschmann, Robert Gilkerson, Erin Schuenzel, Robert Dearth, Reginald Halaby, Wendy Innis-Whitehouse and Megan Keniry

Recommendations for mRNA analysis of micro-dissected glomerular tufts from paraffin-embedded human kidney biopsy samples

Glomeruli are excellent pre-determined natural structures for laser micro-dissection. Compartment-specific glomerular gene expression analysis of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded renal biopsies could improve r...

Authors: Clemens L. Bockmeyer, Juliane Wittig, Karen Säuberlich, Philipp Selhausen, Marc Eßer, Philip Zeuschner, Friedrich Modde, Kerstin Amann and Christoph Daniel

Nutrient depletion and TOR inhibition induce 18S and 25S ribosomal RNAs resistant to a 5′-phosphate-dependent exonuclease in Candida albicans and other yeasts

Messenger RNA (mRNA) represents a small percentage of RNAs in a cell, with ribosomal RNA (rRNA) making up the bulk of it. To isolate mRNA from eukaryotes, typically poly-A selection is carried out. Recently, a...

Authors: Jacob Fleischmann and Miguel A. Rocha

An optimized rapid bisulfite conversion method with high recovery of cell-free DNA

Methylation analysis of cell-free DNA is a encouraging tool for tumor diagnosis, monitoring and prognosis. Sensitivity of methylation analysis is a very important matter due to the tiny amounts of cell-free DN...

Authors: Shaohua Yi, Fei Long, Juanbo Cheng and Daixin Huang

Sumoylation in p27kip1 via RanBP2 promotes cancer cell growth in cholangiocarcinoma cell line QBC939

Cholangiocarcinoma is one of the deadly disease with poor 5-year survival and poor response to conventional therapies. Previously, we found that p27kip1 nuclear-cytoplasmic translocation confers proliferation ...

Authors: Jun Yang, Yan Liu, Bing Wang, Hongzhen Lan, Ying Liu, Fei Chen, Ju Zhang and Jian Luo

An optimised protocol for isolation of RNA from small sections of laser-capture microdissected FFPE tissue amenable for next-generation sequencing

Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue constitutes a vast treasury of samples for biomedical research. Thus far however, extraction of RNA from FFPE tissue has proved challenging due to chemical RNA–pr...

Authors: Parisa Amini, Julia Ettlin, Lennart Opitz, Elena Clementi, Alexandra Malbon and Enni Markkanen

Physical shearing imparts biological activity to DNA and ability to transmit itself horizontally across species and kingdom boundaries

We have recently reported that cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments derived from dying cells that circulate in blood are biologically active molecules and can readily enter into healthy cells to activate DNA damage...

Authors: Gorantla Venkata Raghuram, Deepika Gupta, Siddharth Subramaniam, Ashwini Gaikwad, Naveen Kumar Khare, Malcolm Nobre, Naveen Kumar Nair and Indraneel Mittra

Interaction between NFATc2 and the transcription factor Sp1 in pancreatic carcinoma cells PaTu 8988t

Nuclear factors of activated T-cells (NFATs) have been mainly characterized in the context of immune response regulation because, as transcription factors, they have the ability to induce gene transcription. N...

Authors: Manuela Malsy, Bernhard Graf and Katrin Almstedt

Splicing arrays reveal novel RBM10 targets, including SMN2 pre-mRNA

RBM10 is an RNA binding protein involved in message stabilization and alternative splicing regulation. The objective of the research described herein was to identify novel targets of RBM10-regulated splicing. ...

Authors: Leslie C. Sutherland, Philippe Thibault, Mathieu Durand, Elvy Lapointe, Jose M. Knee, Ariane Beauvais, Irina Kalatskaya, Sarah C. Hunt, Julie J. Loiselle, Justin G. Roy, Sarah J. Tessier, Gustavo Ybazeta, Lincoln Stein, Rashmi Kothary, Roscoe Klinck and Benoit Chabot

Growth arrest specific gene 2 in tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus): molecular characterization and functional analysis under low-temperature stress

Growth arrest specific 2 (gas2) gene is a component of the microfilament system that plays a major role in the cell cycle, regulation of microfilaments, and cell morphology during apoptotic processes. However, li...

Authors: ChangGeng Yang, Fan Wu, Xing Lu, Ming Jiang, Wei Liu, Lijuan Yu, Juan Tian and Hua Wen

Identification of G-quadruplex structures that possess transcriptional regulating functions in the Dele and Cdc6 CpG islands

G-quadruplex is a DNA secondary structure that has been shown to play an important role in biological systems. In a previous study, we identified 1998 G-quadruplex-forming sequences using a mouse CpG islands D...

Authors: Daniyah H. Bay, Annika Busch, Fred Lisdat, Keisuke Iida, Kazunori Ikebukuro, Kazuo Nagasawa, Isao Karube and Wataru Yoshida

Mitochondrial RNA processing in absence of tRNA punctuations in octocorals

Mitogenome diversity is staggering among early branching animals with respect to size, gene density, content and order, and number of tRNA genes, especially in cnidarians. This last point is of special interes...

Authors: Gaurav G. Shimpi, Sergio Vargas, Angelo Poliseno and Gert Wörheide

Microarray expression profiling in the denervated hippocampus identifies long noncoding RNAs functionally involved in neurogenesis

The denervated hippocampus provides a proper microenvironment for the survival and neuronal differentiation of neural progenitors. While thousands of lncRNAs were identified, only a few lncRNAs that regulate n...

Authors: Bingying Deng, Xiang Cheng, Haoming Li, Jianbing Qin, Meiling Tian and Guohua Jin

Early growth response protein 1 regulates promoter activity of α-plasma membrane calcium ATPase 2, a major calcium pump in the brain and auditory system

Along with sodium/calcium (Ca²⁺) exchangers, plasma membrane Ca²⁺ ATPases (ATP2Bs) are main regulators of intracellular Ca²⁺ levels. There are four ATP2B paralogs encoded by four different genes. Atp2b2 encodes t...

Authors: Rebecca R. Minich, Jin Li and Bruce L. Tempel

hSSB1 associates with and promotes stability of the BLM helicase

Maintenance of genome stability is critical in human cells. Mutations in or loss of genome stability pathways can lead to a number of pathologies including cancer. hSSB1 is a critical DNA repair protein functi...

Authors: Laura V. Croft, Nicholas W. Ashton, Nicolas Paquet, Emma Bolderson, Kenneth J. O’Byrne and Derek J. Richard

Selective measurement of α smooth muscle actin: why β-actin can not be used as a housekeeping gene when tissue fibrosis occurs

Prevalence of fibroproliferative diseases, including chronic kidney disease is rapidly increasing and has become a major public health problem worldwide. Fibroproliferative diseases are characterized by increa...

Authors: Apor Veres-Székely, Domonkos Pap, Erna Sziksz, Eszter Jávorszky, Réka Rokonay, Rita Lippai, Kálmán Tory, Andrea Fekete, Tivadar Tulassay, Attila J. Szabó and Ádám Vannay

Erratum to: RUNX1 induces DNA replication independent active DNA demethylation at SPI1 regulatory regions

Authors: Shubham Goyal, Takahiro Suzuki, Jing‑Ru Li, Shiori Maeda, Mami Kishima, Hajime Nishimura, Yuri Shimizu and Harukazu Suzuki

Identification of suitable reference genes for real-time quantitative PCR analysis of hydrogen peroxide-treated human umbilical vein endothelial cells

Oxidative stress can induce cell injury in vascular endothelial cells, which is the initial event in the development of atherosclerosis. Although quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) has ...

Authors: Tianyi Li, Hongying Diao, Lei Zhao, Yue Xing, Jichang Zhang, Ning Liu, Youyou Yan, Xin Tian, Wei Sun and Bin Liu

RUNX1 induces DNA replication independent active DNA demethylation at SPI1 regulatory regions

SPI1 is an essential transcription factor (TF) for the hematopoietic lineage, in which its expression is tightly controlled through a −17-kb upstream regulatory region and a promoter region. Both regulatory re...

Authors: Shubham Goyal, Takahiro Suzuki, Jing-Ru Li, Shiori Maeda, Mami Kishima, Hajime Nishimura, Yuri Shimizu and Harukazu Suzuki

Immunoglobulin T from sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax L.): molecular characterization, tissue localization and expression after nodavirus infection

Immunoglobulins (Igs) are fundamental components of the adaptive immune system of vertebrates, with the IgT/IgZ isotype specific of Teleosts. In this paper we describe the identification of an IgT heavy chain ...

Authors: Francesco Buonocore, Valentina Stocchi, Noelia Nunez-Ortiz, Elisa Randelli, Marco Gerdol, Alberto Pallavicini, Angelo Facchiano, Chiara Bernini, Laura Guerra, Giuseppe Scapigliati and Simona Picchietti

Methylated site display (MSD)-AFLP, a sensitive and affordable method for analysis of CpG methylation profiles

It has been pointed out that environmental factors or chemicals can cause diseases that are developmental in origin. To detect abnormal epigenetic alterations in DNA methylation, convenient and cost-effective ...

Authors: Toshiki Aiba, Toshiyuki Saito, Akiko Hayashi, Shinji Sato, Harunobu Yunokawa, Toru Maruyama, Wataru Fujibuchi, Hisaka Kurita, Chiharu Tohyama and Seiichiroh Ohsako

Properties of STAT1 and IRF1 enhancers and the influence of SNPs

STAT1 and IRF1 collaborate to induce interferon-γ (IFNγ) stimulated genes (ISGs), but the extent to which they act alone or together is unclear. The effect of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) on in vivo ...

Authors: Mohamed Abou El Hassan, Katherine Huang, Manoja B. K. Eswara, Zhaodong Xu, Tao Yu, Arthur Aubry, Zuyao Ni, Izzy Livne-bar, Monika Sangwan, Mohamad Ahmad and Rod Bremner