Gene structure and expression of serotonin receptor HTR2C in hypothalamic samples from infanticidal and control sows.

BACKGROUND: The serotonin pathways have been implicated in behavioural phenotypes in a number of species, including human, rat, mouse, dog and chicken. Components of the pathways, including the receptors, are major targets for drugs used to treat a variety of physiological and psychiatric conditions in humans. In our previous studies we have identified genetic loci potentially contributing to maternal infanticide in pigs, which includes a locus on the porcine X chromosome long arm. The serotonin receptor HTR2C maps to this region, and is therefore an attractive candidate for further study based on its function and its position in the genome. RESULTS: In this paper we describe the structure of the major transcripts produced from the porcine HTR2C locus using cDNA prepared from porcine hypothalamic and pooled total brain samples. We have confirmed conservation of sites altered by RNA editing in other mammalian species, and identified polymorphisms in the gene sequence. Finally, we have analysed expression and editing of HTR2C in hypothalamus samples from infanticidal and control animals. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm that although the expression of the long transcriptional variant of HTR2C is raised in infanticidal animals, the overall patterns of editing in the hypothalamus are similar between the two states.Sequences associated with the cDNA and genomic structures of HTR2C reported in this paper are deposited in GenBank under accession numbers FR720593, FR720594 and FR744452.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Laser synthesis of ligand-free bimetallic nanoparticles for plasmonic applications.

A picosecond laser ablation approach has been developed for the synthesis of ligand-free AuAg bimetallic NPs where the relative amount of Ag is controlled in situ through a laser shielding effect. Various measurements, such as optical spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy combined with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, revealed the generation of homogenous 15 nm average size bimetallic NPs with different compositions and tunable localized surface plasmon resonance. Furthermore, ligand-free metallic nanoparticles with respect to chemically synthesized nanoparticles display outstanding properties, i.e. featureless Raman background spectrum, which is a basic requirement in many plasmonic applications such as Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. Various molecules were chemisorbed on the nanoparticle and SERS investigations were carried out, by varying the laser wavelength. The SERS enhancement factor for AuAg bimetallic NPs shows an enhancement factor of about 5.7 × 105 with respect to the flat AuAg surface

Antioxidant activity assay of stem and in vitro callusing of Tinospora cordifolia (Miers.)

The experiment was conducted to study the antioxidant potential among different hosts of Tinospora cordifolia. The results indicated that the among the different hosts of T. cordifolia, Ficus religiosa had highest phenol content (5.25 mg g-1), inhibition activity (52.05%) and reducing capability as compared to others. F. religiosa showed the highest antioxidant activity of 41.73 μM Fe (II) g-1. EC50 value for lipid peroxidation inhibitory activity was 0.1mg mL-1 for all the samples. EC50 value for DPPH radical scavenging activity was 0.6 mg mL-1 for F. religiosa. This results suggested that the active antioxidant compounds were higher in F. religiosa as compared to Roystonea regia. There was a direct correlation between the total polyphenols extracted and anti-oxidant activity. Among the various explants of F. religiosa, leaf explants were found to be superior for in vitro callus induction. &nbsp

Intracerebral Masson's Tumor—Slow-Filling Vascular Lesion Demonstrated by Indocyanine Green Video Angiography

BACKGROUND: Intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia or Massons's tumours are benign vascular lesions which are rarely seen intracranially. The vascular characteristics of these lesions are also unknown. CASE DESCRIPTION: We report a case of a 24 year old male patient with a 3 year history of headache and dizziness. Neuroradiological imaging showed a slow-growing lesion consistent with a low-grade glioma. Intra-operative appearance was of a vascular lesion which was slow-filling as demonstrated with indocyanine green video angiography. Histological analysis following resection revealed intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia (Masson's tumour). CONCLUSION: Masson's tumours are slow-filling vascular lesions. The pre-operative diagnosis of this lesion is difficult as it can mimic a neoplastic lesion. Conservative as well as surgical treatment options should therefore be carefully considered. Patients with subtotal resection must undergo long-term follow-up surveillance imaging as recurrence is a possibility

Upregulated sirtuin 1 by miRNA-34a is required for smooth muscle cell differentiation from pluripotent stem cells

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. microRNA-34a (miR-34a) and sirtuin 1 (SirT1) have been extensively studied in tumour biology and longevityaging, but little is known about their functional roles in smooth muscle cell (SMC) differentiation from pluripotent stem cells. Using well-established SMC differentiation models, we have demonstrated that miR-34a has an important role in SMC differentiation from murine and human embryonic stem cells. Surprisingly, deacetylase sirtuin 1 (SirT1), one of the top predicted targets, was positively regulated by miR-34a during SMC differentiation. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that miR-34a promoted differentiating stem cells' arrest at G0G1 phase and observed a significantly decreased incorporation of miR-34a and SirT1 RNA into Ago2-RISC complex upon SMC differentiation. Importantly, we have identified SirT1 as a transcriptional activator in the regulation of SMC gene programme. Finally, our data showed that SirT1 modulated the enrichment of H3K9 tri-methylation around the SMC gene-promoter regions. Taken together, our data reveal a specific regulatory pathway that miR-34a positively regulates its target gene SirT1 in a cellular context-dependent and sequence-specific manner and suggest a functional role for this pathway in SMC differentiation from stem cells in vitro and in vivo

MAGIA, a web-based tool for miRNA and Genes Integrated Analysis

MAGIA (miRNA and genes integrated analysis) is a novel web tool for the integrative analysis of target predictions, miRNA and gene expression data. MAGIA is divided into two parts: the query section allows the user to retrieve and browse updated miRNA target predictions computed with a number of different algorithms (PITA, miRanda and Target Scan) and Boolean combinations thereof. The analysis section comprises a multistep procedure for (i) direct integration through different functional measures (parametric and non-parametric correlation indexes, a variational Bayesian model, mutual information and a meta-analysis approach based on P-value combination) of mRNA and miRNA expression data, (ii) construction of bipartite regulatory network of the best miRNA and mRNA putative interactions and (iii) retrieval of information available in several public databases of genes, miRNAs and diseases and via scientific literature text-mining. MAGIA is freely available for Academic users at http://gencomp.bio.unipd.it/magia