MicroRNA-140-5p inhibits cellular proliferation, migration and invasion by downregulating AKT/STAT3/NF-κB pathway in breast carcinoma cells

MicroRNA-140-5p (miR-140-5p) plays a pivotal role in human cancers. However, its role and molecular mechanisms in breast carcinoma are not fully explored. Using miR-140-5p transfected breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231, several in vitro experiments were performed and described in this paper. They consist of the cell proliferation assay, wound healing assay, transwell assay, colony formation assays and qRTPCR. Expression levels of target proteins were determined using western blotting. In addition, experiments on animal models were performed to study the possible role of miR-140-5p in tumorigenesis of breast carcinoma cells. The induction of experimental breast tumor in mice model was achieved through the incorporation of MDA-MB-231 tumor cells subcutaneously into the middle left side of the mice. The results showed that miR-140-5p up-regulation significantly suppresses proliferation, cellular invasion and migration of breast carcinoma cells. Furthermore, miR-140-5p up-regulation stops breast cancer cells at G0/G1 phase. The results of the animal model indicated that up-regulation of miR-140-5p suppresses its tumorigenic ability. Moreover, we also found that miR-140-5p up-regulation reduces the phosphorylation level of STAT3, p65, and AKT. In addition, miR-140-5p overexpression significantly decreases CDK2 expression while increasing E-cadherin expression level. These data revealed that miR-140-5p suppressed tumor progression of breast carcinoma cells through inhibition of the AKT/STAT3/NF-κB pathway. Taken the present study results together, we can conclude that miR-140-5p may act as a novel target in microRNA-targeting anticancer strategy for the treatment of breast cancer

Overview on the Role of Advance Genomics in Conservation Biology of Endangered Species

In the recent era, due to tremendous advancement in industrialization, pollution and other anthropogenic activities have created a serious scenario for biota survival. It has been reported that present biota is entering a &quot;sixth&quot; mass extinction, because of chronic exposure to anthropogenic activities. Various ex situ and in situ measures have been adopted for conservation of threatened and endangered plants and animal species; however, these have been limited due to various discrepancies associated with them. Current advancement in molecular technologies, especially, genomics, is playing a very crucial role in biodiversity conservation. Advance genomics helps in identifying the segments of genome responsible for adaptation. It can also improve our understanding about microevolution through a better understanding of selection, mutation, assertive matting, and recombination. Advance genomics helps in identifying genes that are essential for fitness and ultimately for developing modern and fast monitoring tools for endangered biodiversity. This review article focuses on the applications of advanced genomics mainly demographic, adaptive genetic variations, inbreeding, hybridization and introgression, and disease susceptibilities, in the conservation of threatened biota. In short, it provides the fundamentals for novice readers and advancement in genomics for the experts working for the conservation of endangered plant and animal species.</p

Catechins-Modified Selenium-Doped Hydroxyapatite Nanomaterials for Improved Osteosarcoma Therapy Through Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer with limited therapeutic options. It can be treated by selenium-doped hydroxyapatite owing to its known antitumor potential. However, a high concentration of Se is toxic toward normal and stem cells whereas its low concentration cannot effectively remove cancer cells. Therefore, the current study was aimed to improve the anticancer activity of Se-HAp nanoparticles through catechins (CC) modification owing to their high cancer therapeutic value. The sequentially developed catechins modified Se-HAp nanocomposites (CC/Se-HAp) were characterized for various physico-chemical properties and antitumor activity. Structural analysis showed the synthesis of small rod-like single phase HAp nanoparticles (60 +/- 15 nm), which effectively interacted with Se and catechins and formed agglomerated structures. TEM analysis showed the internalization and degradation of CC/Se-HAp nanomaterials within MNNG/HOS cells through a non-specific endocytosis process. Cell toxicity analysis showed that catechins modification improved the antitumor activity of Se-HAp nanocomposites by inducing apoptosis of human osteosarcoma MNNG/HOS cell lines, through generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which in turn activated the caspase-3 pathway, without significantly affecting the growth of human normal bone marrow stem cells (hBMSCs). qPCR and western blot analyses revealed that casp3, p53, and bax genes were significantly upregulated while cox-2 and PTK-2 were slightly downregulated as compared to control in CC/Se-HAp-treated MNNG/HOS cell lines. The current study of combining natural biomaterial (i.e., catechins) with Se and HAp, can prove to be an effective therapeutic approach for bone cancer therapy.</p

Effect of Salt Stress on Growth, Physiological Parameters, and Ionic Concentration of Water Dropwort (Oenanthe javanica) Cultivars

Salt stress is an important environmental limiting factor. Water dropwort (Oenanthe javanica) is an important vegetable in East Asia; however, its phenotypic and physiological response is poorly explored. For this purpose, 48 cultivars of water dropwort were grown hydroponically and treated with 0, 50, 100, and 200 mm NaCl for 14 days. Than their phenotypic responses were evaluated, afterward, physiological studies were carried out in selected sensitive and tolerant cultivars. In the present study, the potential tolerant (V11E0022) and sensitive (V11E0135) cultivars were selected by screening 48 cultivars based on their phenotype under four different levels of salt concentrations (0, 50, 100, and 200 mm). The results depicted that plant height, number of branches and leaves were less effected in V11E0022, and most severe reduction was observed in V11E0135 in comparison with others. Than the changes in biomass, ion contents, accumulation of reactive oxygen species, and activities of antioxidant enzymes and non-enzymatic antioxidants were determined in the leaves and roots of the selected cultivars. The potential tolerant cultivar (V11E0022) showed less reduction of water content and demonstrated low levels of Na+ uptake, malondialdehyde, and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in both leaves and roots. Moreover, the tolerant cultivar (V11E0022) showed high antioxidant activities of ascorbate peroxidase (APX), superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, catalase (CAT), reduced glutathione (GSH), and high accumulation of proline and soluble sugars compared to the sensitive cultivar (V11E0135). These results suggest the potential tolerance of V11E0022 cultivar against salt stress with low detrimental effects and a good antioxidant defense system. The observations also suggest good antioxidant capacity of water dropwort against salt stress. The findings of the present study also suggest that the number of branches and leaves, GSH, proline, soluble sugars, APX, and CAT could serve as the efficient markers for understanding the defense mechanisms of water dropwort under the conditions of salt stress

A comparison of growth on mercuric chloride for three Lemnaceae species reveals differences in growth dynamics that effect their suitability for use in either monitoring or remediating ecosystems contaminated with mercury

Mercury (Hg) is a toxic heavy metal that can alter the ecological balance when it contaminates aquatic ecosystems. Previously, researchers have used various Lemnaceae species either to monitor and/or remove heavy metals from freshwater systems. As Hg contamination is a pressing issue for aquatic systems worldwide, we assessed its impact on the growth of three commonly species of Lemnaceae - Lemna gibba 6745, Lemna minor 6580 and Spirodela polyrhiza 5543. We exposed plants to different concentrations of mercuric chloride (HgCl₂) and monitored their growth, including relative growth rate, frond number (FN), and fresh weight (FW). These data were coupled with measurements of starch content, levels of photosynthetic pigment and the activities of antioxidant substances. The growth of all three lines showed significant negative correlations with Hg concentrations, and starch content, photosynthetic pigment, soluble protein and antioxidant enzymes levels were all clearly affected. Our results indicate that the L. gibba line used in this study was the most suitable of the three for biomonitoring of water contaminated with Hg. Accumulation of Hg was highest in the S. polyrhiza line with a bioconcentration factor over 1,000, making this line the most suitable of the three tested for use in an Hg bioremediation system

SemStamp: A Semantic Watermark with Paraphrastic Robustness for Text Generation

Existing watermarking algorithms are vulnerable to paraphrase attacks because of their token-level design. To address this issue, we propose SemStamp, a robust sentence-level semantic watermarking algorithm based on locality-sensitive hashing (LSH), which partitions the semantic space of sentences. The algorithm encodes and LSH-hashes a candidate sentence generated by an LLM, and conducts sentence-level rejection sampling until the sampled sentence falls in watermarked partitions in the semantic embedding space. A margin-based constraint is used to enhance its robustness. To show the advantages of our algorithm, we propose a "bigram" paraphrase attack using the paraphrase that has the fewest bigram overlaps with the original sentence. This attack is shown to be effective against the existing token-level watermarking method. Experimental results show that our novel semantic watermark algorithm is not only more robust than the previous state-of-the-art method on both common and bigram paraphrase attacks, but also is better at preserving the quality of generation