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Various pesticides in the form of mixtures must be used to keep tobacco crops pest-free. Recent studies have shown a link between occupational exposure to pesticides in tobacco crops and increased damage to the DNA, mononuclei, nuclear buds and binucleated cells in buccal cells as well as micronuclei in lymphocytes. Furthermore, pesticides used specifically for tobacco crops shorten telomere length (TL) significantly. However, the molecular mechanism of pesticide action on telomere length is not fully understood. Our study evaluated the interaction between a complex mixture of chemical compounds (tobacco cultivation pesticides plus nicotine) and proteins associated with maintaining TL, as well as the biological processes involved in this exposure by System Biology tools to provide insight regarding the influence of pesticide exposure on TL maintenance in tobacco farmers. Our analysis showed that one cluster was associated with TL proteins that act in bioprocesses such as (i) telomere maintenance via telomere lengthening; (ii) senescence; (iii) age-dependent telomere shortening; (iv) DNA repair (v) cellular response to stress and (vi) regulation of proteasome ubiquitin-dependent protein catabolic process. We also describe how pesticides and nicotine regulate telomere length. In addition, pesticides inhibit the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) and consequently increase proteins of the shelterin complex, avoiding the access of telomerase in telomere and, nicotine activates UPS mechanisms and promotes the degradation of human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), decreasing telomerase activity.

The peanut plant produces flowers aerially, while develops the fruits and seeds underground. Pod swelling is a vital process of peanut pod and seed development only occurring after the gynophore carrying the ovule into the soil. The failure of gynophore penetration into the soil leads to suppression of pod swelling initiation. However, the molecular mechanism underlying the process remains unknown. A comparative proteome analysis between developing aerial and subterranean pods at various developmental stages was performed using 2-DE approach. 47 significantly differentially expressed spots were selected to further identification by MALDI-TOF–TOF MS. They were corresponded to 31 distinct proteins, suggesting that many identified spots were modified in post-translation. Functional annotation revealed their involvement in twelve important biological processes, such as photosynthesis, oxidative stress response, lignin synthesis, fatty acid biosynthesis, glycolysis, protein catabolic process, cellular metabolic process, regulation process, etc. Furthermore, 10 identified proteins were validated by real-time RT-PCR analysis. Several photosynthesis and oxidative stress proteins displayed elevated expression levels in aerial pods. Otherwise, enzymes in lignin synthesis and ubiquitin proteasome system were down-accumulation in subterranean pods. These enzymes might function as potential candidate proteins and play critical roles to regulate pods swelling and development. Biological significance Pod swelling plays a crucial role in peanut fruit and seed development. However, a large number of aerial pods can't form normal pods due to suppression of swelling initiation by the failure of penetration into the soil, thereby causing to seed yield loss. Limited knowledge is available underlying molecular mechanism regulating initiation of swelling in peg tips and pod development. The results generated in this study may provide evidence for some functional proteins as potential candidates to pod swelling and new molecular insights to improve our understanding of pod development under light and darkness conditions, which may contribute valuable information to high yield breeding in future.

Background Neuropsychiatric disorders represent a large public health and economic burden at a national and global level, and delineating the genetic architecture of mental disorders across molecular levels will aid in the development of novel treatment and prevention strategies. Whereas most psychiatric disorders are moderately to highly heritable and there are evidences of shared genetic etiology for psychiatric disorders, we aimed to investigate gene expression profiling in adolescents with psychiatric disorders from a large prospective community school-based study in Brazil, the High Risk Cohort (HRC) Study for Psychiatric Disorders. Methods This is a cross-sectional study comprised of adolescents from the HRC. Participants were assessed using the structured diagnostic interview Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA) to evaluate psychiatric diagnosis according to the DSM-IV and psychopathology measures were assessed using Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Transcriptome in blood was compared between 23 adolescents with at least one psychiatric disorder (PD group) and 25 healthy controls (HC group) with no previous psychiatric disorder and low psychopathology symptoms. Blood gene expression profiling was measured using HumanHT-12 v4.0 Expression BeadChip (Illumina) and the 100 most associated genes list was brought forth to assess whether they were enriched for any Gene Ontology (GO) Biological Process category or canonical pathway (by KEGG - Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) using the Enrichr tool. Results The most prevalent diagnosis in PD group was anxiety disorders (44%), followed by major depression (28%), conduct disorders (28%) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD – 24%), knowing that some of those diagnoses were overlapped. We have not found differentially expressed genes between the PD and HC groups after multiple comparisons correction. The 100 most associated genes were enriched with GO “proteasome-mediated ubiquitin-dependent protein catabolic process” (p=0.0005) and “proteasomal protein catabolic process” (p=0.0007); and with the KEGG “proteasome Homo sapiens” (p=0.020) and “lysosome Homo sapiens” (p=0.023) canonical pathways. Discussion Although we have not found a significant gene expression profiling, likely by the sample size, our cohort is a very well clinically characterized and unique sample of adolescents with psychiatric disorders and healthy controls from HRC Study. Degradation of proteins by the ubiquitin-proteasome system is an essential biological process in the development of eukaryotic organisms. The proteasome pathway has been associated with neurodevelopmental syndromes and early onset of some psychiatric disorder. Therefore, our results suggest that this pathway could be associated with early onset psychiatric disorders.