Glycemic Variability Assessed by Continuous Glucose Monitoring and Short-Term Outcome in Diabetic Patients Undergoing Percutaneous Coronary Intervention: An Observational Pilot Study

Poor glycemic control is associated with unfavorable outcome in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), irrespective of diabetes mellitus. However a complete assessment of glycemic status may not be fully described by glycated hemoglobin or fasting blood glucose levels, whereas daily glycemic fluctuations may influence cardiovascular risk and have even more deleterious effects than sustained hyperglycemia. Thus, this paper investigated the effectiveness of a continuous glucose monitoring (CGM), registering the mean level of glycemic values but also the extent of glucose excursions during coronary revascularization, in detecting periprocedural outcome such as renal or myocardial damage, assessed by serum creatinine, neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), and troponin I levels. High glycemic variability (GV) has been associated with worse postprocedural creatinine and NGAL variations. Moreover, GV, and predominantly hypoglycemic variations, has been observed to increase in patients with periprocedural myocardial infarction. Thus, our study investigated the usefulness of CGM in the setting of PCI where an optimal glycemic control should be achieved in order to prevent complications and improve outcome

The acetyltransferase p300 is recruited in trans to multiple enhancer sites by lncSmad7

The histone acetyltransferase p300 (also known as KAT3B) is a general transcriptional coactivator that introduces the H3K27ac mark on enhancers triggering their activation and gene transcription. Genome-wide screenings demonstrated that a large fraction of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) plays a role in cellular processes and organ development although the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unclear (1,2). We found 122 lncRNAs that interacts directly with p300. In depth analysis of one of these, lncSmad7, is required to maintain ESC self-renewal and it interacts to the C-terminal domain of p300. lncSmad7 also contains predicted RNA-DNA Hoogsteen forming base pairing. Combined Chromatin Isolation by RNA precipitation followed by sequencing (ChIRP-seq) together with CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis of the target sites demonstrate that lncSmad7 binds and recruits p300 to enhancers in trans, to trigger enhancer acetylation and transcriptional activation of its target genes. Thus, these results unveil a new mechanism by which p300 is recruited to the genome

A mouse embryonic stem cell bank for inducible overexpression of human chromosome 21 genes

BACKGROUND: Dosage imbalance is responsible for several genetic diseases, among which Down syndrome is caused by the trisomy of human chromosome 21. RESULTS: To elucidate the extent to which the dosage imbalance of specific human chromosome 21 genes perturb distinct molecular pathways, we developed the first mouse embryonic stem (ES) cell bank of human chromosome 21 genes. The human chromosome 21-mouse ES cell bank includes, in triplicate clones, 32 human chromosome 21 genes, which can be overexpressed in an inducible manner. Each clone was transcriptionally profiled in inducing versus non-inducing conditions. Analysis of the transcriptional response yielded results that were consistent with the perturbed gene's known function. Comparison between mouse ES cells containing the whole human chromosome 21 (trisomic mouse ES cells) and mouse ES cells overexpressing single human chromosome 21 genes allowed us to evaluate the contribution of single genes to the trisomic mouse ES cell transcriptome. In addition, for the clones overexpressing the Runx1 gene, we compared the transcriptome changes with the corresponding protein changes by mass spectroscopy analysis. CONCLUSIONS: We determined that only a subset of genes produces a strong transcriptional response when overexpressed in mouse ES cells and that this effect can be predicted taking into account the basal gene expression level and the protein secondary structure. We showed that the human chromosome 21-mouse ES cell bank is an important resource, which may be instrumental towards a better understanding of Down syndrome and other human aneuploidy disorders

Tools for Assessing Neuropathic Pain

Giorgio Cruccu and Andrea Truini discuss a new pain assessment tool published in PLoS Medicine called Standardized Evaluation of Pain and they review other tools to assess neuropathic pain

Metabolic control of DNA methylation in naive pluripotent cells.

Naive epiblast and embryonic stem cells (ESCs) give rise to all cells of adults. Such developmental plasticity is associated with genome hypomethylation. Here, we show that LIF-Stat3 signaling induces genomic hypomethylation via metabolic reconfiguration. Stat3-/- ESCs show decreased α-ketoglutarate production from glutamine, leading to increased Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b expression and DNA methylation. Notably, genome methylation is dynamically controlled through modulation of α-ketoglutarate availability or Stat3 activation in mitochondria. Alpha-ketoglutarate links metabolism to the epigenome by reducing the expression of Otx2 and its targets Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b. Genetic inactivation of Otx2 or Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b results in genomic hypomethylation even in the absence of active LIF-Stat3. Stat3-/- ESCs show increased methylation at imprinting control regions and altered expression of cognate transcripts. Single-cell analyses of Stat3-/- embryos confirmed the dysregulated expression of Otx2, Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b as well as imprinted genes. Several cancers display Stat3 overactivation and abnormal DNA methylation; therefore, the molecular module that we describe might be exploited under pathological conditions