Biocell : Official Journal of the Sociedades Latinoamericanas de Microscopía Electronica ... Et. Al

BACKGROUND: Women with obesity have higher risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preeclampsia (PE). Late-gestational hypertension, aberrant fetoplacental development, and fetal growth restriction (FGR), hallmarks of PE, are observed spontaneously in BPH/5 mice. Similar to obese preeclamptic women, BPH/5 mice have higher visceral white adipose tissue (WAT) and circulating leptin. We hypothesized that attenuation of maternal obesity and serum leptin in pregnant BPH/5 mice will improve fetoplacental development by decreasing hypoxia markers and leptin expression at the maternal-fetal interface...

BACKGORUND: Fruits and seed extracts of Annona montana have significant cytotoxic potential in several cancer cells. This study evaluates the effect of A. montana leaves hexane extract on several signaling cascades and gene expression in metastatic breast cancer cells upon insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) stimulation. METHODS: MTT assay was performed to determine the proliferation of cancer cells. Propidium iodide staining and flow cytometry analysis of Annexin V binding was utilized to measure the progression of the cell cycle and the induction of apoptosis...

Age and diabetes have long been known to induce an oxidative reaction between glucose and collagen, leading to the accumulation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) cross-links in collagenous tissues. More recently, AGEs content has been related to loss of bone quality, independent of bone mass, and increased fracture risk with aging and diabetes. Loss of bone quality is mostly attributed to changes in material properties, structural organization, or cellular remodeling. Though all these factors play a role in bone fragility disease, some common recurring patterns can be found between diabetic and age-related bone fragility...

Osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of joint disease, is characterized clinically by joint pain, stiffness, and deformity. OA is now considered a whole joint disease; however, the breakdown of the articular cartilage remains the major hallmark of the disease. Current treatments targeting OA symptoms have a limited impact on impeding or reversing the OA progression. Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying OA development is a critical barrier to progress in OA therapy. Recent studies by the current authors' group and others have revealed that the nuclear factor of activated T cell 1 (NFAT1), a member of the NFAT family of transcription factors, regulates the expression of many anabolic and catabolic genes in articular chondrocytes of adult mice...

Protein-mediated interactions are the fundamental mechanism through which cells regulate health and disease. These interactions require physical contact between proteins and their respective targets of interest. These targets include not only other proteins but also nucleic acids and other important molecules as well. These proteins are often involved in multibody complexes that work dynamically to regulate cellular health and function. Various techniques have been adapted to study these important interactions, such as affinity-based assays, mass spectrometry, and fluorescent detection...

Since 2019, the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly worldwide, posing an unignorable threat to the global economy and human health. It is a disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, a single-stranded RNA virus of the genus Betacoronavirus. This virus is highly infectious and relies on its angiotensin-converting enzyme 2-receptor to enter cells. With the increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses, the difficulty of diagnosis due to the lack of global healthcare resources becomes increasingly apparent...

Osteosarcoma is one of the most genomically complex cancers and as result, it has been difficult to assign genomic aberrations that contribute to disease progression and patient outcome consistently across samples. One potential source for correlating osteosarcoma and genomic biomarkers is within the non-coding regions of RNA that are differentially expressed. However, it is unsurprising that a cancer classification that is fraught with genomic instability is likely to have numerous studies correlating non-coding RNA expression and function have been published on the subject...

Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) are the primary effector cells in liver fibrosis. In the normal liver, HSCs serve as the primary vitamin A storage cells in the body and retain a "quiescent" phenotype. However, after liver injury, they transdifferentiate to an "activated" myofibroblast-like phenotype, which is associated with dramatic upregulation of smooth muscle specific actin and extracellular matrix proteins. The result is a fibrotic, stiff, and dysfunctional liver. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms that govern HSC function is essential for the development of anti-fibrotic medications...

The knowledge of interactions among functional proteins helps researchers understand disease mechanisms and design potential strategies for treatment. As a general approach, the fluorescent and affinity tags were employed for exploring this field by labeling the Protein of Interest (POI). However, the autofluorescence and weak binding strength significantly reduce the accuracy and specificity of these tags. Conversely, HaloTag, a novel self-labeling enzyme (SLE) tag, could quickly form a covalent bond with its ligand, enabling fast and specific labeling of POI...

Single-cell sequencing technologies have rapidly progressed in recent years, and been applied to characterize stem cells in a number of organs. Somatic (postnatal) stem cells are generally identified using combinations of cell surface markers and transcription factors. However, it has been challenging to define micro-heterogeneity within "stem cell" populations, each of which stands at a different level of differentiation. As stem cells become defined at a single-cell level, their differentiation path becomes clearly defined...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have long been regarded as critical components of regenerative medicine strategies, given their multipotency and persistence in a variety of tissues. Recently, the specific role of MSCs in mediating regenerative outcomes has been attributed (in part) to secreted factors from transplanted cells, namely extracellular vesicles. This viewpoint manuscript highlights the promise of cell-derived extracellular vesicles as agents of regeneration, enhanced by synergy with appropriate biomaterials platforms...

The Annona genus is a member of Annonaceae, one of the largest families of plants across tropical and subtropical regions. This family has been used in several ethnomedicinal practices to treat a multitude of human diseases. However, the molecular mechanism underlying its effect on the lipid droplet formation and on the expression of adipogenic markers of this plant remain to be investigated. In this study, we examined whether the extracts from the aerial part of Annona montana affect in vitro differentiation of preadipocytes...

Pain and lifestyle changes are common consequences of intervertebral disc degeneration (IVDD) and affect a large part of the aging population. The stemness of cells is exploited in the field of regenerative medicine as key to treat degenerative diseases. Transplanted cells however often face delivery and survival challenges, especially in tissues with a naturally harsh microniche environment such as the intervertebral disc. Recent interest in the secretome of stem cells, especially cargo protected from microniche-related decay as frequently present in degenerating tissues, provides new means of rejuvenating ailing cells and tissues...

Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is a debilitating condition characterized by damage to the spinal cord, resulting in loss of function, mobility, and sensation. Although increasingly prevalent in the US, no FDA-approved therapy exists due to the unfortunate complexity of the condition, and the difficulties of SCI may be furthered by the development of SCI-related complications, such as osteoporosis. SCI demonstrates two crucial stages for consideration: the primary stage and the secondary stage. While the primary stage is suggested to be immediate and irreversible, the secondary stage is proposed as a promising window of opportunity for therapeutic intervention...

The exosome-mediated response can promote or restrain the diseases by regulating the intracellular pathways, making the exosome become an effective marker for diagnosis and therapeutic control at the single-cell level. However, real-time analysis is hard to be achieved with traditional approaches because the exosomes usually need to be enriched by ultracentrifugation for a measurable signal-to-noise ratio. Recently developed label-free single-molecule imaging approaches may become an real-time quantitative tool for the analysis of single exosomes and related secretion behaviors of single living cells owing to their extreme sensitivity...

Pediatric central nervous system tumors are the most common tumors in children, it constitute 15%-20% of all malignancies in children and are the leading cause of cancer related deaths in children. Proteogenomics is an emerging field of biological research that utilizes a combination of proteomics, genomics, and transcriptomics to aid in the discovery and identification of biomarkers for diagnosis and therapeutic purposes. Integrative proteogenomics analysis of pediatric tumors identified underlying biological processes and potential treatments as well as the functional effects of somatic mutations and copy number variation driving tumorigenesis...

Single-cell sequencing data has transformed the understanding of biological heterogeneity. While many flavors of single-cell sequencing have been developed, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) is currently the most prolific form in published literature. Bioinformatic analysis of differential biology within the population of cells studied relies on inferences and grouping of cells due to the spotty nature of data within individual cell scRNA-seq gene counts. One biologically relevant variable is readily inferred from scRNA-seq gene count tables regardless of individual gene representation within single cells: aneuploidy...

Integrin molecules are transmembrane αβ heterodimers involved in cell adhesion, trafficking, and signaling. Upon activation, integrins undergo dynamic conformational changes that regulate their affinity to ligands. The physiological functions and activation mechanisms of integrins have been heavily discussed in previous studies and reviews, but the fluorescence imaging techniques -which are powerful tools for biological studies- have not. Here we review the fluorescence labeling methods, imaging techniques, as well as Förster resonance energy transfer assays used to study integrin expression, localization, activation, and functions...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Cadmium (Cd) induces several effects in different tissues, but our knowledge of the toxic effects on organelles is insufficient. To observe the progression of Cd effects on organelle structure and function, HuH-7 cells (human hepatic carcinoma cell line) were exposed to CdCl2 in increasing concentrations (1 microM - 20 microM) and exposure times (2 h - 24 h). During Cd treatment, the cells exhibited a progressive decrease in viability that was both time- and dose-dependent. Cd treated cells displayed progressive morphological changes that included cytoplasm retraction and nuclear condensation preceding a total loss of cell adhesion...