Deletion of Cardiac miR-17-92 Cluster Increases Ischemia/ Reperfusion Injury via PTEN Upregulation

The miR-17- 92 cluster is necessary for cell proliferation and development of the cardiovascular system. Deletion of this cluster leads to death in neonatal mice. The role of this cluster still needs to be defined following ischemia and reperfusion. Methods and Results: Adult male mice were injected with Tamoxifen- was to induce inducible cardiac-specific miR-17- 92-deficient (miR-17- 92-def: MCM:TG:miR-17- 92 flox/flox ) and wild type (WT: MCM:NTG:miR-17-92 flox/flox ) mice were subjected to 30 minutes of myocardial ischemia via left anterior descending coronary artery ligation followed by reperfusion for 24 hours. Post I/R survival (48%) and ejection fraction were reduced, while myocardial infarct size enlarged in miR-17- 92-deficient mice as compared to WT mice (survival: 71%). Necrosis (trypan blue staining) and apoptosis (TUNEL assay) both were higher in adult cardiomyocytes isolated from miR-17- 92-deficient mice as compared to WT mice subjected to simulated ischemia/reoxygenation with a concomitant reduction of mitochondrial membrane potential (JC1 staining). The electron transport chain was compromised through dysregulation of glutamate+malate as complex I substrate and malate dehydrogenase in the hearts of miR-17- 92-deficient mice compared to WT. After 4 hours of reperfusion, PTEN expression, a downstream target of miR-20A, increased, while phosphorylation of AKT reduced in the hearts of miR-17- 92-deficient mice in comparison to WT. The induced knockdown of cardiac miR-17- 92 increases myocardial I/R injury by ceasing suppression of PTEN, leading to decreased concentrations of AKT and mitochondrial dysfunction. These results suggest that innovative therapeutic strategies can focus on genetic upregulation of miR-17- 92 in patients with coronary artery disease

Particle Production at CBM in a Thermal Model Approach

The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment planned at Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will provide a major scientific effort for exploring the properties of strongly interacting matter in the high baryon density regime. One of the important goal behind such experiment is to precisely determine the equation of state (EOS) for the strongly interacting matter at extreme baryon density. In this paper, we have used a thermal model EOS incorporating excluded volume description for the hot and dense hadron gas (HG). We then predict different particle ratios and the total multiplicity of various hadrons in the CBM energy range i.e. from $10$ A GeV to $40$ A GeV lab energies, which corresponds to $4.43$ A GeV and $8.71$ A GeV center-of-mass energies. Our main emphasis is to estimate the strange particles enhancement as well as increase in the net baryon density in CBM experiment. We have also compared our results with the results obtained from various other theoretical approaches existing in the literature such as hadron string dynamics (HSD) model and ultra-relativistic quantum molecular dynamics (UrQMD) etc.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Demand for Money in the Asian Countries: A Systems GMM Panel Data Approach and Structural Breaks

A systems GMM method is used to estimate the demand for money (M1) for a panel of 11 Asian countries from 1970 to 2007. This method has advantages of which the most important one is its ability to minimise small sample bias with persistence in the variables. This system GMM method of Blundell and Bond (1998) simultaneously estimates specifications with the levels and first differences specifications of the variables. We test for structural stability of the estimated function with a recently developed test, for this approach, by Mancini-Griffoli and Pauwels (2006). Our results show that there is a well defined demand for money for these countries and there are no structural breaks.Systems GMM, Blundell and Bond, Mancini-Griffoli and Pauwels, Asian Countries and Demand for Money and Structural Sta