Search results for "H30"
showing 10 items of 1587 documents
Indirect Selection against Antibiotic Resistance via Specialized Plasmid-Dependent Bacteriophages
2021
Antibiotic resistance genes of important Gram-negative bacterial pathogens are residing in mobile genetic elements such as conjugative plasmids. These elements rapidly disperse between cells when antibiotics are present and hence our continuous use of antimicrobials selects for elements that often harbor multiple resistance genes. Plasmid-dependent (or male-specific or, in some cases, pilus-dependent) bacteriophages are bacterial viruses that infect specifically bacteria that carry certain plasmids. The introduction of these specialized phages into a plasmid-abundant bacterial community has many beneficial effects from an anthropocentric viewpoint: the majority of the plasmids are lost whil…
NG2-Glia Transiently Overcome Their Homeostatic Network and Contribute to Wound Closure After Brain Injury
2021
In the adult brain, NG2-glia represent a cell population that responds to injury. To further investigate if, how and why NG2-glia are recruited to the injury site, we analyzed in detail the long-term reaction of NG2-glia after a lesion by time-lapse two-photon in vivo microscopy. Live imaging over several weeks of GFP-labeled NG2-glia in the stab wounded cerebral cortex revealed their fast and heterogeneous reaction, including proliferation, migration, polarization, hypertrophy, or a mixed response, while a small subset of cells remained unresponsive. At the peak of the reaction, 2–4 days after the injury, NG2-glia accumulated around and within the lesion core, overcoming the homeostatic co…
Endocrine disrupters: the new players able to affect the epigenome
2015
Epigenetics represents the way by which the environment is able to program the genome; there are three main levels of epigenetic control on genome: DNA methylation, post-translational histone modification and microRNA expression. The term Epigenetics has been widened by NIH to include “both heritable changes in gene activity and expression but also stable, long-term alterations in the transcriptional potential of a cell that are not necessarily heritable.” These changes might be produced mostly by the early life environment and might affect health influencing the susceptibility to develop diseases, from cancer to mental disorder, during the entire life span. The most studied environmental i…
Metabolomics: An Emerging Approach to Understand Pathogenesis and to Assess Diagnosis and Response to Treatment in Spondyloarthritis
2022
Spondyloarthritis (SpA) is a group of rheumatic diseases whose pathogenesis relies on a complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Over the last several years, the importance of the alteration of the gut microbiota, known as dysbiosis, and the interaction of bacterial products with host immunity have been highlighted as intriguing key players in SpA development. The recent advent of the so called “-omics” sciences, that include metabolomics, opened the way to a new approach to SpA through a deeper characterisation of the pathogenetic mechanisms behind the disease. In addition, metabolomics can reveal potential new biomarkers to diagnose and monitor SpA patients. The aim of…
Levels and Changes of Physical Activity in Adolescents during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Contextualizing Urban vs. Rural Living Environment
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing implemented shortly after influence physical activity levels (PALs). The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the changes in PAL and factors associated with PALs among Croatian adolescents while considering the impact of community (urban vs. rural living environment). The sample included 823 adolescents (mean age: 16.5 ±
Antitumor Effect of Cabozantinib in Bone Metastatic Models of Renal Cell Carcinoma
2021
Background: The presence of bone metastases in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) negatively affects patients’ survival. Data from clinical trials has highlighted a significant benefit of cabozantinib in bone metastatic RCC patients. Here, we evaluated the antitumor effect of cabozantinib in coculture models of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and osteoblasts (OBs) to investigate whether and how its antiproliferative activity is influenced by OBs. Methods: Bone/RCC models were generated, coculturing green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged Caki-1 and 786-O cells with human primary OBs in a “cell–cell contact” system. RCC proliferation and the OB molecular profile were evaluated after the cabozantinib treat…
Regulation of the HTRA2 Protease Activity by an Inhibitory Antibody-Derived Peptide Ligand and the Influence on HTRA2-Specific Protein Interaction Ne…
2021
The mitochondrial serine protease HTRA2 has many versatile biological functions ranging from being an important regulator of apoptosis to being an essential component for neuronal cell survival and mitochondrial homeostasis. Loss of HTRA2 protease function is known to cause neurodegeneration, whereas overactivation of its proteolytic function is associated with cell death and inflammation. In accordance with this, our group verified in a recent study that the synthetic peptide ASGYTFTNYGLSWVR, encoding the hypervariable sequence part of an antibody, showed a high affinity for the target protein HTRA2 and triggered neuroprotection in an in vitro organ culture model for glaucoma. To unravel t…
Investigation of a Gravel-Bed River’s Pattern Changes: Insights from Satellite Images
2021
Changes in river pattern have been documented in the literature. The recognition of islands and vegetated patches, which is indicative of the evolution processes, requires simultaneous information at different points and at different times and field studies are still difficult and scarce. The present work, focusing the attention on a gravel-bed river, explores the possibility to conduct a first-step pattern changes analysis by identifying the evolution of the morphological features and taking information of islands and vegetated patches from satellite images easily available from Google Earth. The study is conducted by combining the information taken from both the satellite images and the f…
Perceptions of university students about their education in physics in secondary education
2018
Este artículo presenta los resultados de un cuestionario diagnóstico sobre las percepciones hacia la física, por parte de 104 estudiantes, quienes inician su carrera profesional de Licenciatura en Ciencias Naturales y Educación Ambiental, en una universidad colombiana. Este estudio, se centró en las siguientes categorías: experiencias sobre el aprendizaje de la física, metodología del profesor en la clase de física, dificultades de los estudiantes para aprender física y sugerencias para mejorar su enseñanza. Los resultados reflejan la importancia de explorar y generar estrategias, que permitan optimizar las cuatro dimensiones; por ejemplo, en relación al aprendizaje de la física, los partic…
Bcl-xL as a Modulator of Senescence and Aging
2021
Many features of aging result from the incapacity of cells to adapt to stress conditions. When cells are overwhelmed by stress, they can undergo senescence to avoid unrestricted growth of damaged cells. Recent findings have proven that cellular senescence is more than that. A specific grade of senescence promotes embryo development, tissue remodeling and wound healing. However, constant stresses and a weakening immune system can lead to senescence chronicity with aging. The accumulation of senescent cells is directly related to tissue dysfunction and age-related pathologies. Centenarians, the most aged individuals, should accumulate senescent cells and suffer from their deleterious effects,…