Thyroid hormone dependent gene expression

The presented work is destined to review the advances that had been made to study the role of thyroid hormone and thyroid hormone nuclear receptors in regulating the gene expression. Triiodothyronine (T3) and tetraiodothyronine (thyroxine or T4) are most important thyroid hormones. The thyroid hormones bind to their specific nuclear hormone receptors, as ligand, and play important role in gene expression and transcriptional gene regulation in human and higher animals. Thyroid hormone receptors form heterodimers by making combination with retinoid X receptors. The capability of heterodimerization of thyroid hormones generates novel complexes which allow altered specificity and higher affinity for DNA-receptor binding. Thyroid hormone receptors work as ligand activated transcription factor and play with transcriptional gene expression process. The consensus structural features of thyroid hormone receptors are N-terminal regulatory domain that contains activation function, the domain for strong gene expression and the domain for binding to DNA. The structures for individual domains have been extensively and reviewed through several latest and successful techniques.

Association of STAT4 rs7574865 with sysceptibility to juvenile onset systemic lupus erythematous in Pakistani population

Association of STAT4 (signal transducer and activator of transcription4) haplotype tagged by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs7574865 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was reported in different populations. This study was aimed to investigate a genetic association between STAT4 single nucleotide polymorphism (rs7574865) with susceptibility and clinical features of systemic lupus erythematosus in Pakistani population. A total of 75 clinically diagnosed individuals affected with SLE were enrolled from Children’s Hospital and Institute of Child Health Lahore. Sixty-eight healthy individuals of same ethnicity were also enrolled for this study. Clinical assessment of patients was done with the help of clinical features suggestive for SLE and some diagnostic tests specific for the disease were performed. SNP rs7574865 was genotyped by allele specific tetra ARMS PCR assay to check and compare the genotypic allele frequencies between SLE patients and healthy controls. Different statistical analysis ChiSquare, Fisher’s exact tests and binary Logistic Regression is performed to determine association of risk alleles with SLE in Pakistani population. p value less than >0.05 consider significant. This study showed the frequency of GG (28%), TT (12%), and GT alleles (60%) in SLE patients while controls showed allele frequencies of GG (5%), TT (29%) and GT (64%), respectively. The results showed that GG genotype and G allele in STAT4 rs7574865 was the risk allele for SLE while T allele proved to be the protective one for disease susceptibility when compared with healthy controls genotypic frequencies. This study suggests the strong association of SNP rs7574865 in STAT4 with the risk of SLE in Pakistani population. However, G allele showed no association with organ damage and immune disorder of SLE

Update and Validation of the 16S rDNA qPCR Assay for the Detection of Three ‘Candidatus Liberibacter Species’ Following Current MIQE Guidelines and Workflow

An updated real-time multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay was designed and validated for the simultaneous detection of three ‘Candidatus Liberibacter species’ (CLsp), ‘Ca. Liberibacter asiaticus’ (CLas), ‘africanus’ (CLaf), and ‘americanus’ (CLam), associated with the huanglongbing disease of citrus. The multiplex assay was designed based on the qPCR assay published in 2006 by Li et al., considering all available CLsp 16S rRNA gene sequences in GenBank and the MIQE guidelines and workflow for qPCR optimization, which became available after 2006. When using the updated multiplex CLsp qPCR assay compared with singleplex qPCR, no significant increase in quantitative cycle (Cq) values was detected. The specificity and sensitivity of the updated qPCR assay was optimal, and measuring the intra- and interassay variations confirmed the reproducibility and repeatability of the assay. The assay was also successfully used with a large number of diverse samples at independent laboratories in four countries, thus demonstrating its transferability, applicability, practicability, and robustness as different qPCR reaction conditions or instruments had a minor effect on Cq values. This updated multiplex CLsp qPCR assay can be used in a variety of citrus surveys, germplasm, or nursery stock programs that require different pathogen detection tools for their successful operation. [Graphic: see text] Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license