Search results for " nucleic acid"

From Genesis to Revelation: The Role of Inflammatory Mediators in Chronic Respiratory Diseases and their Control by Nucleic Acid-based Drugs.

2015

Asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, are among the most common chronic diseases and their prevalence is increasing. Each of these diseases is characterized by the secretion of cytokines and pro-inflammatory molecules which are thought to play a critical role in their pathogenesis. Moreover, immune cells, particularly neutrophils, macrophages and dendritic cells as well structural cells such as epithelial and airway smooth muscle cells are also involved in the pathogenic cycle of these diseases. There is a pressing need for the development of new therapies for these pulmonary diseases, particularly as no existing treatment has bee…

piRNA cluster database: a web resource for piRNA producing loci

2015

Piwi proteins and their guiding small RNAs, termed Piwi-interacting (pi-) RNAs, are essential for silencing of transposons in the germline of animals. A substantial fraction of piRNAs originates from genomic loci termed piRNA clusters and sequences encoded in these piRNA clusters determine putative targets for the Piwi/piRNA system. In the past decade, studies of piRNA transcriptomes in different species revealed additional roles for piRNAs beyond transposon silencing, reflecting the astonishing plasticity of the Piwi/piRNA system along different phylogenetic branches. Moreover, piRNA transcriptomes can change drastically during development and vary across different tissues. Since piRNA clu…

The nucleic acid-binding protein PcCNBP is transcriptionally regulated during the immune response in red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii

2016

Gene family encoding cellular nucleic acid binding proteins (CNBP) is well conserved among vertebrates; however, there is limited knowledge in lower organisms. In this study, a CNBP homolog from the red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii was characterised. The full-length cDNA of PcCNBP was of 1257 bp with a 5′-untranslated region (UTR) of 63 bp and a 3′-UTR of 331 bp with a poly (A) tail, and an open-reading frame (ORF) of 864 bp encoding a polypeptide of 287 amino acids with the predicted molecular weight of about 33 kDa. The predicted protein possesses 7 tandem repeats of 14 amino acids containing the CCHC zinc finger consensus sequence, two RGG-rich single-stranded RNA-binding domain an…

Parallel algorithms for large-scale biological sequence alignment on Xeon-Phi based clusters

2016

Computing alignments between two or more sequences are common operations frequently performed in computational molecular biology. The continuing growth of biological sequence databases establishes the need for their efficient parallel implementation on modern accelerators. This paper presents new approaches to high performance biological sequence database scanning with the Smith-Waterman algorithm and the first stage of progressive multiple sequence alignment based on the ClustalW heuristic on a Xeon Phi-based compute cluster. Our approach uses a three-level parallelization scheme to take full advantage of the compute power available on this type of architecture; i.e. cluster-level data par…

Opportunities and Challenges of Liquid Biopsy in Thyroid Cancer

2021

Thyroid cancer is the most common malignancy of the endocrine system, encompassing different entities with distinct histological features and clinical behavior. The diagnostic definition, therapeutic approach, and follow-up of thyroid cancers display some controversial aspects that represent unmet medical needs. Liquid biopsy is a non-invasive approach that detects and analyzes biological samples released from the tumor into the bloodstream. With the use of different technologies, tumor cells, free nucleic acids, and extracellular vesicles can be retrieved in the serum of cancer patients and valuable molecular information can be obtained. Recently, a growing body of evidence is accumulating…

Non-Redundant tRNA Reference Sequences for Deep Sequencing Analysis of tRNA Abundance and Epitranscriptomic RNA Modifications

2021

Analysis of RNA by deep-sequencing approaches has found widespread application in modern biology. In addition to measurements of RNA abundance under various physiological conditions, such techniques are now widely used for mapping and quantification of RNA modifications. Transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules are among the frequent targets of such investigation, since they contain multiple modified residues. However, the major challenge in tRNA examination is related to a large number of duplicated and point-mutated genes encoding those RNA molecules. Moreover, the existence of multiple isoacceptors/isodecoders complicates both the analysis and read mapping. Existing databases for tRNA sequencing pr…

Real-life evaluation of a rapid extraction-free SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR assay (COVID-19 PCR Fast-L) for the diagnosis of COVID-19.

2021

Genomic organization and promoter characterization of the gene encoding a putative endoplasmic reticulum chaperone, ERp29

2002

Abstract ERp29 is a soluble protein localized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of eukaryotic cells, which is conserved in all mammalian species. The N-terminal domain of ERp29 displays sequence and structural similarity to the protein disulfide isomerase despite the lack of the characteristic double cysteine motif. Although the exact function of ERp29 is not yet known, it was hypothesized that it may facilitate folding and/or export of secretory proteins in/from the ER. ERp29 is induced by ER stress, i.e. accumulation of unfolded proteins in the ER. To gain an insight into the mechanisms regulating ERp29 expression we have cloned and characterized the rat ERp29 gene and studied in details …

Sequence of a sea urchin hsp70 gene and its 5' flanking region.

1990

We report the nucleotide sequence of a 4470-bp fragment derived from a sea urchin genomic clone containing part of a heat-shock protein 70 (Hsp70)-encoding gene. This fragment, named hsp70 gene II, contains 1271 bp of the flanking region and 3299 bp of structural gene sequence interrupted by five introns and encoding the N-terminal 371 amino acids (aa) of the protein. The 5' flanking region contains a putative TATA element, two CCAAT boxes, four heat-shock consensus sequence elements (hse) and one consensus sequence for binding of Sp1. Remarkable homologies were observed for deduced aa sequence and intron-exon organization between hsp70 gene II and rat hsc73 gene.

Dual targeting of higher-order DNA structures by azacryptands induces DNA junction-mediated DNA damage in cancer cells

2021

Abstract DNA is intrinsically dynamic and folds transiently into alternative higher-order structures such as G-quadruplexes (G4s) and three-way DNA junctions (TWJs). G4s and TWJs can be stabilised by small molecules (ligands) that have high chemotherapeutic potential, either as standalone DNA damaging agents or combined in synthetic lethality strategies. While previous approaches have claimed to use ligands that specifically target either G4s or TWJs, we report here on a new approach in which ligands targeting both TWJs and G4s in vitro demonstrate cellular effects distinct from that of G4 ligands, and attributable to TWJ targeting. The DNA binding modes of these new, dual TWJ-/G4-ligands w…