Search

Background: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, progressive fibrosing lung disease with high mortality. Inflammation and epithelial mesenchymal transformation (EMT) may play an important role in the occurrence and development of IPF. Qing-Re-Huo-Xue formula (QRHXF) has been used clinically by our team for half a century and has obvious therapeutic effects on lung disease. Nevertheless, the role and mechanism of QRHXF in the treatment of IPF have never been studied. Methods: A mouse pulmonary fibrosis model was established by intratracheal injection of BLM. The effects of QRHXF on the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis were studied by pulmonary function testing, imaging examination, pathological staining, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation and mRNA expression. Tandem mass tag (TMT)-based quantitative proteomics was carried out to analyse the lung protein expression profiles between the control (CTL), bleomycin (BLM) and QRHXF (BLM + QRHXF) groups. Immunohistochemistry and qRT-PCR were used to verify the possible existence of drug target proteins and signalling pathways. Results: The results of pulmonary function, lung pathology and imaging examinations showed that QRHXF could significantly alleviate BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis in vivo. Additionally, inflammatory cell infiltration and EMT were markedly reduced in BLM-induced PF mice administered QRHXF. Proteomics detected a total of 35 proteins, of which 17 were upregulated and 18 were downregulated. A total of 19 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) overlapped between the BLM versus CTL groups and the BLM + QRHXF versus BLM groups. The expression of p53 and IGFBP3 was reversed in the QRHXF intervention group, which was verified by immunohistochemistry and qRT-PCR. Conclusions: QRHXF attenuated BLM-induced pulmonary fibrosis, and regulation of the p53/IGFBP3 pathway might be associated with its efficacy, which holds promise as a novel treatment strategy for pulmonary fibrosis patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the most important cereal crops, providing food for humans and feed for other animals. However, its productivity is challenged by various biotic and abiotic stresses such as fungal diseases, insects, drought, salinity, and cold. Transcription factors (TFs) regulate gene expression in different tissues and at various developmental stages in plants and animals, and they can be identified and classified into families according to their structural and specialized DNA-binding domains (DBDs). Transcription factors are important regulatory components of the genome, and are the main targets for engineering stress tolerance. Results: In total, 2407 putative TFs were identified from wheat expressed sequence tags, and then classified into 63 families by using Hmm searches against hidden Markov model (HMM) profiles. In this study, 2407 TFs represented approximately 2.22% of all genes in the wheat genome, a smaller proportion than those reported for other cereals in PlantTFDB V3.0 (3.33%-5.86%) and PlnTFDB (4.30%-6.46%). We assembled information from the various databases for individual TFs, including annotations and details of their developmental stage- and tissue-specific expression patterns. Based on this information, we identified 1257 developmental stage-specific TFs and 1104 tissue-specific TFs, accounting for 52.22% and 45.87% of the 2407 wheat TFs, respectively. We identified 338, 269, 262, 175, 49, and 18 tissue-specific TFs in the flower, seed, root, leaf, stem, and crown, respectively. There were 100, 6, 342, 141, 390, and 278 TFs specifically expressed at the dormant seed, germinating seed, reproductive, ripening, seedling, and vegetative stages, respectively. We constructed a comprehensive database of wheat TFs, designated as WheatTFDB (http://xms.sicau.edu.cn/wheatTFDB/). Conclusions: Approximately 2.22% (2407 genes) of all genes in the wheat genome were identified as TFs, and were clustered into 63 TF families. We identified 1257 developmental stage-specific TFs and 1104 tissue-specific TFs, based on information about their developmental- and tissue-specific expression patterns obtained from publicly available gene expression databases. The 2407 wheat TFs and their annotations are summarized in our database, WheatTFDB. These data will be useful identifying target TFs involved in the stress response at a particular stage of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cucurbit chlorotic yellows virus (CCYV), a bipartite crinivirus, causes chlorotic leaf spots and yellowing symptoms on cucurbit leaves. We previously developed an infectious clone of CCYV. Limited work has been conducted on the construction of a crinivirus green fluorescence protein (GFP) expression vector to date. Finding: We constructed a CCYV GFP expression vector using the "add a gene" strategy based on CCYV RNA2 cDNA constrcut. Three resultant clones, pCCYVGFPSGC, pCCYVGFPCGC, and pCCYVGFPCGS, were constructed with different promoters used to initiate GFP and CP expression. At 25 dpi GFP fluorescence was detectable not only in leaf veins but also in the surrounding cells. pCCYVGFPCGC-infected cucumber leaves exhibited cell spread at 25 dpi, whereas pCCYVGFPSGC and pCCYVGFPCGS were mainly found in single cells. Further observation of pCCYVGFPCGC GFP expression at 30 dpi, 40 dpi, and 50 dpi showed phloem-limited localization in the systemic leaves. Conclusions: We developed of a CCYV GFP expression vector that will be useful for further study of CCYV movement in cucurbits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]