Jane Eyre Gabriel

Revealing highly conserved regions in the E6 protein among distinct human papillomavirus types using comparative analysis of multiple sequence alignments.

Several epidemiological and molecular studies have confirmed that cervical infection by certain human papillomaviruses (HPV) types is a precursor of the genesis of cervical neoplasia (Gravitt, 2011; Guzman-Olea et al., 2012). It is yet well elucidated that high risk genotypes lead to the development of cervical cancer and are also associated with other mucosal anogenital, head and neck tumors. The HPV genome is approximately 8 kb in length and is divided into three regions, the non-coding long control region (LCR, ~1 kb), and the protein coding early (E, ~4 kb) and late (L, ~3 kb) regions (Ganguly and Parihar, 2009). The viral genome encodes six early (E1, E2, E4, E5, E6 and E7) and two late (L1 and L2) proteins. HPV

Abundance of MyoD and myostatin transcripts in chicken embryos submitted to distinct incubation temperatures and timing exposures

563 The formation of skeletal muscle tissue is directly modulated by intricate expressing the distinct signalling molecules orchestrated by the myogenic regulatory factors, such as the myogenic determination factor MyoD, that activates the transcription of muscle-specific genes by binding to consensus DNA sites found in the regulatory sequences of these genes, differentiate and fuse the myoblasts in order to form the muscle fibres (Buckingham, 2006). Its expression is detected at an earlier stage of myogenesis when quiescent stem cells rapidly expand in number to generate the myoblasts needed to repair tissue damage (Glass, 2010) and several studies have demonstrated that MyoD is sufficient and necessary for the formation or survival of skeletal myoblasts (Emerson, 1993; Buckingham, 2006). In this context, it was already well characterised that myostatin is a secreted growth and differentiation factor belonging to the transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta superfamily that exert an important modulator role of body composition in experimental animals by controlling the proliferation of myoblasts, followed by inhibiting the differentiation of these cells (Rodgers and Garikipati, 2008; Glass, 2010). Few reports in the literature have investigated how the abundance of myogenic regulatory genes is altered in chicken embryos exposed to distinct adverse incubation temperatures and timing exposures (Gabriel et al., 2003, 2006). Based on this evidence, the purpose of the present study was to quantify the levels of MyoD and myostatin transcripts in chicken embryos exposed to low and high incubation temperatures for distinct timing exposure using real time PCR assays. Fertilised chicken eggs (Gallus gallus domesticus, Linnaeus, 1758) from the Cobb line were maintained in a humidified atmosphere in an incubator (Premium Ecológica, model IP120). After a four-day incubation period at 37 ± 0.5 °C (control incubation condition) and 60% relative humidity, some eggs were transferred to other incubators registering low (33 ± 0.5 °C) and high (44 ± 0.5 °C) incubation temperatures. These eggs remained for one and two hours under these conditions, and at the end of each hour, six embryos per treatment were then collected for further experiments. The collection of embryos on the fourth day of incubation was based on the evidence that Abundance of MyoD and myostatin transcripts in chicken embryos submitted to distinct incubation temperatures and timing exposures

Heterologous induction of a predicted promoter sequence for paraquat-inducible genes of Chromobacterium violaceum in response to paraquat compound

(With 1 Figure)The Chromobacterium violaceum is a Gram-negative, free-living betaproteobacterium that dominates a variety of ecosystems in tropical and subtropical regions. Notably, several refined mechanisms related to remarkable and exploitable adaptability have been revealed in the genome prospecting of this bacterium, including biological responses to oxidative stress by predicting of paraquat-inducible proteins ( Brazilian National Genome Project Consortium, 2003). In the cited study, two open reading frames (ORFs) for paraquat-inducible proteins were identified during genome annotation analyses of C. violaceum ATCC 12472, demonstrating a high similarity to sequences of paraquat-inducible genes ( pqi genes) previously characterized in the Escherichia coli bacterium ( Farr and Kogoma, 1991 ). The paraquat-inducible genes are drastically modulated by acting of several oxidizing agents, unleashing a complex cellular response to oxidative stress in a great variety of bacterial strains to minimize deleterious effects of the superoxide radical-generating compounds on the maintenance of the cellular homeostasis (Hungria et al., 2004). Thus, the purpose of the present study was to functionally evaluate the influence of the paraquat compound on the heterologous induction of the predicted promoter sequence for paraquat-inducible genes revealed during genome annotation analyses of the C. violaceum bacterium.Initially, specific primers were designed by using computational program (http://www.idtdncom/SciTools/SciTools.aspx) to flank target sites situated between ORFs CV2550 and CV2551, corresponding to the promoter sequence of paraquat-inducible genes predicted during C. violaceum genome annotation analyses. Sequences of the forward (5’–CGT