Past Issues in 2019

In multi-cellular organisms, cells communicate with each other utilizing chemical messengers. For many of these messenger molecules, the membrane is an insurmountable barrier. Yet, they act by binding to surface proteins often triggering a cascade of reactions inside the cell. Accordingly, studying ligand-receptor interactions at the cellular ...

Silver nanoparticles have been widely studied to possess antimicrobial as well as anticancer activity, and have found its applications in various fields including pharmaceutical industry, diagnostics, drug delivery, food industry, and others. For this purpose, several cell proliferation assays are widely used for the evaluation of anticancer ...

Heterochrony refers to changes in the timing of developmental events, and it is precisely regulated in the organisms by the heterochronic genes such as C. elegans lin-4 and let-7. Mutations in these genes cause precocious or retarded development of certain cell lineages. With well-defined cell lineages, C. elegans ...

Mesenchymal stem cells have the ability to differentiate into multiple lineages, including adipocytes, osteoblasts and chondrocytes. Mesenchymal stem cells can be induced to differentiate into chondrocytes in extracellular matrices, such as alginate or collagen gel. Mesenchymal stem cells in a cell pellet or micromass culture can be also induced ...

In vitro differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) towards blood cells constitutes a well-established system to study the endothelial-to-hematopoietic transition (EHT) at the onset of blood development. Assessing the emergence of small non-adherent round blood cells in the culture without disturbing it is essential to evaluate ...

Inflammatory Ly6C^hi monocytes can give rise to distinct mononuclear myeloid cells in the tumor microenvironment, such as monocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells (Mo-MDSC), immature macrophages, M2-like tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), M1-like TAMs or monocyte-derived dendritic cells (Mo-DCs). This protocol describes a method to ...

D-amino acid transaminase (D-AAT) is able to synthesize both D-glutamate and D-alanine, according to the following reaction: D-alanine + α-ketoglutarate ⇌ D-glutamate + pyruvate. These two D-amino acids are essential components of the peptidoglycan layer of bacteria. In our recently published work, MSMEG_5795 from Mycobacterium smegmatis ...

Recent advances in genomics present new opportunities for enhancing knowledge about gene regulation and function across a wide spectrum of organisms and species. Understanding and evaluating this information at the individual gene level is challenging, and not only requires extracting, collating and interpreting data from public genetic ...

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is a powerful genome-editing tool that promises application for gene editing therapies. The Cas9 nuclease is directed to the DNA by a programmable single guide (sg)RNA, and introduces a site-specific double-stranded break (DSB). In mammalian cells, DSBs are either repaired by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), generating ...

Presynaptic boutons at nerve terminals are densely packed with synaptic vesicles, specialized organelles for rapid and regulated neurotransmitter secretion. Upon depolarization of the nerve terminal, synaptic vesicles fuse at specializations called active zones that are localized at discrete compartments in the plasma membrane to initiate synaptic ...

In recent years, fluorescent dyes have been frequently used for monitoring mitochondrial membrane potential to evaluate mitochondrial viability and function. However, the reproducibility of the results across laboratories strongly depends upon following well validated and reliable protocols along with the appropriate controls. Herein, we provide a ...

Cyanobacteria represent a frequently used model organism for the study of oxygenic photosynthesis. They belong to prokaryotic microorganisms but their photosynthetic apparatus is quite similar to that found in algal and plant chloroplasts. The key players in light reactions of photosynthesis are Photosystem I and Photosystem II complexes (PSI and ...