Search results for "Wester"
showing 10 items of 1157 documents
Amyloid Precursor-like Protein 1 Influences Endocytosis and Proteolytic Processing of the Amyloid Precursor Protein
2005
Ectodomain shedding of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a key regulatory step in the generation of the Alzheimer disease amyloid beta peptide (Abeta). The molecular mechanisms underlying the control of APP shedding remain little understood but are in part dependent on the low density lipoprotein receptor-related protein (LRP), which is involved in APP endocytosis. Here, we show that the APP homolog APLP1 (amyloid precursor-like protein 1) influences APP shedding. In human embryonic kidney 293 cells expression of APLP1 strongly activated APP shedding by alpha-secretase and slightly reduced beta-secretase cleavage. As revealed by domain deletion analysis, the increase in APP shedding re…
Dendritic cells trigger tumor cell death by a nitric oxide-dependent mechanism.
2007
Abstract Dendritic cells (DCs) are well known for their capacity to induce adaptive antitumor immune response through Ag presentation and tumor-specific T cell activation. Recent findings reveal that besides this role, DCs may display additional antitumor effects. In this study, we provide evidence that LPS- or IFN-γ-activated rat bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDCs) display killing properties against tumor cells. These cytotoxic BMDCs exhibit a mature DC phenotype, produce high amounts of IL-12, IL-6, and TNF-α, and retain their phagocytic properties. BMDC-mediated tumor cell killing requires cell-cell contact and depends on NO production, but not on perforin/granzyme or on death re…
Using Y-chromosome capture enrichment to resolve haplogroup H2 shows new evidence for a two-path Neolithic expansion to Western Europe
2021
Uniparentally-inherited markers on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the non-recombining regions of the Y chromosome (NRY), have been used for the past 30 years to investigate the history of humans from a maternal and paternal perspective. Researchers have preferred mtDNA due to its abundance in the cells, and comparatively high substitution rate. Conversely, the NRY is less susceptible to back mutations and saturation, and is potentially more informative than mtDNA owing to its longer sequence length. However, due to comparatively poor NRY coverage via shotgun sequencing, and the relatively low and biased representation of Y-chromosome variants on capture assays such as the 1240 k, ancient DNA…
The Czech Nation: Between Czechoslovak and Czech Nationalism
2009
According to a popular saying, when Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918, it became an Austria-Hungary in miniature. This historian’s simile indicated that the nation-state of the Czechoslovaks displayed all the good and undesirable features of the Dual Monarchy. On the positive side, it was the only Central European polity where democracy survived throughout the interwar period. In general, the state was a welcoming home to three nations (the Czechs, Slovaks, and Ruthenians), and three sizeable minorities (Germans, Magyars, and Poles). The Czechoslovak economy (concentrated in the Czech lands, formerly Austria-Hungary’s most significant powerhouse) was the strongest in the region and enabled…
Parvovirus B19 nonstructural protein-induced damage of cellular DNA and resultant apoptosis.
2010
Parvovirus B19 is a widespread virus with diverse clinical presentations. The viral nonstructural protein, NS1, binds to and cleaves the viral genome, and induces apoptosis when transfected into nonpermissive cells, such as hepatocytes. We hypothesized that the cytotoxicity of NS1 in such cells results from chromosomal DNA damage caused by the DNA-nicking and DNA-attaching activities of NS1. Upon testing this hypothesis, we found that NS1 covalently binds to cellular DNA and is modified by PARP, an enzyme involved in repairing single-stranded DNA nicks. We furthermore discovered that the DNA nick repair pathway initiated by poly(ADPribose)polymerase and the DNA repair pathways initiated by …
Histone carbonylation occurs in proliferating cells
2012
12 páginas, 10 figuras (que no es encuentran en este documento, se pueden ver en: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891584912000664)
Processing of O6-methylguanine into DNA double-strand breaks requires two rounds of replication whereas apoptosis is also induced in subsequent cell …
2009
The DNA adduct O(6)-methylguanine (O(6)MeG) induced by environmental genotoxins and anticancer drugs is a highly mutagenic, genotoxic and apoptotic lesion. Apoptosis induced by O(6)MeG requires mismatch repair (MMR) and proliferation. Models of O(6)MeG-triggered cell death postulate that O(6)MeG/T mispairs activate MMR giving rise to either direct genotoxic signaling or secondary lesions that trigger apoptotic signaling in the 2(nd) replication cycle. To test these hypotheses, we used a highly synchronized cell system competent and deficient for the repair of O(6)MeG adducts, which were induced by the S(N)1 methylating agent N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG). We show that DNA doub…
Developmental control of the heat-shock stress regulon in Streptomyces coelicolor
1995
In the differentiating eubacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, nutritional imbalances activate a developmental programme which involves the heat-shock stress regulon. In liquid batch cultures, the growth curve could be separated into four components: rapid growth 1 (RG1), transition (T), rapid growth 2 (RG2) and stationary (S). Patterns of gene expression in cultures subjected to heat shock in various phases were recorded on two-dimensional gels and analysed using advanced statistical methods. The responses of all heat-shock proteins (HSPs) were highly dependent upon the growth phase, thus demonstrating that the four phases of growth were physiologically distinct. For many HSPs, the levels of …
Rapid molecular dissection of viral and bacterial immunomes
2006
The development of preventive or therapeutic recombinant vaccines and the generation of serodiagnostic assays for infectious diseases depend essentially on the availability of molecularly defined antigens. A major bottleneck for the identification of suitable target antigens for many pathogens is the isolation of sufficient amounts of material for subsequent genomic or proteomic screening. Applying a highly efficient expression cloning strategy to the human pathogens vaccinia virus (VV) and Chlamydia pneumoniae (CP), we demonstrate that sub-nanogram amounts of isolated nucleic acids can be utilized to determine comprehensive sets of immunodominant antigens. Remarkably, the approach not only…
Comparative sequence analysis of the Clostridium difficile toxins A and B.
1992
The six clones pTB112, pTB324, pTBs12, pCd122, pCd14 and pCd13 cover the tox locus of Clostridium difficile VPI 10463. This region of 19 kb of chromosomal DNA contains four open reading frames including the complete toxB and toxA genes. The two toxins show 63% amino acid (aa) homology, a relatedness that had been predicted by the cross-reactivity of some monoclonal antibodies (mAb) but that is in contrast to the toxin specificity of polyclonal antisera. A special feature of ToxA and ToxB is their repetitive C-termini. We define herein 19 individual CROPs (combined repetitive oligopeptides of 20-50 aa length) in the ToxB C-terminus, which are separable into five homologous groups. Comparison…