10 research outputs found
Lung fibroblasts from patients with emphysema show markers of senescence in vitro
BACKGROUND: The loss of alveolar walls is a hallmark of emphysema. As fibroblasts play an important role in the maintenance of alveolar structure, a change in fibroblast phenotype could be involved in the pathogenesis of this disease. In a previous study we found a reduced in vitro proliferation rate and number of population doublings of parenchymal lung fibroblasts from patients with emphysema and we hypothesized that these findings could be related to a premature cellular aging of these cells. In this study, we therefore compared cellular senescence markers and expression of respective genes between lung fibroblasts from patients with emphysema and control patients without COPD. METHODS: Primary lung fibroblasts were obtained from 13 patients with moderate to severe lung emphysema (E) and 15 controls (C) undergoing surgery for lung tumor resection or volume reduction (n = 2). Fibroblasts (8E/9C) were stained for senescence-associated ÎČ-galactosidase (SA-ÎČ-Gal). In independent cultures, DNA from lung fibroblasts (7E/8C) was assessed for mean telomere length. Two exploratory 12 k cDNA microarrays were used to assess gene expression in pooled fibroblasts (3E/3C). Subsequently, expression of selected genes was evaluated by quantitative PCR (qPCR) in fibroblasts of individual patients (10E/9C) and protein concentration was analyzed in the cell culture supernatant. RESULTS: The median (quartiles) percentage of fibroblasts positive for SA-ÎČ-Gal was 4.4 (3.2;4.7) % in controls and 16.0 (10.0;24.8) % in emphysema (p = 0.001), while telomere length was not different. Among the candidates for differentially expressed genes in the array (factor â„ 3), 15 were upregulated and 121 downregulated in emphysema. qPCR confirmed the upregulation of insulin-like growth factor-binding protein (IGFBP)-3 and IGFBP-rP1 (p = 0.029, p = 0.0002), while expression of IGFBP-5, -rP2 (CTGF), -rP4 (Cyr61), FOSL1, LOXL2, OAZ1 and CDK4 was not different between groups. In line with the gene expression we found increased cell culture supernatant concentrations of IGFBP-3 (p = 0.006) in emphysema. CONCLUSION: These data support the hypothesis that premature aging of lung fibroblasts occurs in emphysema, via a telomere-independent mechanism. The upregulation of the senescence-associated IGFBP-3 and -rP1 in emphysema suggests that inhibition of the action of insulin and insulin-like growth factors could be involved in the reduced in vitro-proliferation rate
Evidence for a narrow |S|=1 baryon state at a mass of 1528 MeV in quasi-real photoproduction
Evidence for a narrow baryon state is found in quasi-real photoproduction on
a deuterium target through the decay channel p K^0_S --> p pi^+ pi^-. A peak is
observed in the p K^0_S invariant mass spectrum at 1528 +/- 2.6 (stat) +/-2.1
(syst) MeV. Depending on the background model,the naive statistical
significance of the peak is 4--6 standard deviations and its width may be
somewhat larger than the experimental resolution of sigma=4.3 -- 6.2 MeV. This
state may be interpreted as the predicted S=+1 exotic Theta^{+}(uuddbar(s))
pentaquark baryon. No signal for an hypothetical Theta^{++} baryon was observed
in the pK^+ invariant mass distribution. The absence of such a signal indicates
that an isotensor Theta is excluded and an isovector Theta is unlikely.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Atherosclerosis and Alzheimer - diseases with a common cause? Inflammation, oxysterols, vasculature
Low oxygen tension alleviates oxidative damage and delays cellular senescence in G6PD-deficient cells
Beam-charge azimuthal asymmetry and deeply virtual Compton scattering
The first observation of an azimuthal cross section asymmetry with
respect to the charge of the incoming lepton beam is reported from a
study of hard exclusive electroproduction of real photons. The data
have been accumulated by the HERMES experiment at DESY, in which the
HERA 27.6 GeV electron or positron beam scattered off an unpolarized
hydrogen gas target. The observed asymmetry is attributed to the
interference between the Bethe-Heitler process and the deeply virtual
Compton scattering (DVCS) process. The interference term is sensitive
to DVCS amplitudes, which provide the most direct access to generalized
parton distributions
Measurement of the tensor structure function b(1) of the deuteron
The Hermes experiment has investigated the tensor spin structure of the deuteron using the 27.6 GeV/c positron beam of DESY HERA. The use of a tensor-polarized deuteron gas target with only a negligible residual vector polarization enabled the first measurement of the tensor asymmetry A(zz)(d) and the tensor structure function b(1)(d) for average values of the Bjorken variable 0.01 < 5 GeV2. The quantities A(zz)(d) and b(1)(d) are found to be nonzero. The rise of b(1)(d) for decreasing values of x can be interpreted to originate from the same mechanism that leads to nuclear shadowing in unpolarized scattering