Cell motility and invasion are important for development, immunity, wound healing, and tumor cell metastasis. Cells on two dimensional substrates migrate in three steps: protrusion of the front end, translocation of the cell body, and retraction of the rear end. For cells to migrate efficiently, these steps need to be...
Glioblastoma, which occurs in adults primarily between ages of 40 to 70 years and accounts for 15% of all brain tumors, is a devastating diagnosis with a median survival rate of less than a year. Invasiveness of glioblastoma cells significantly reduces the effectiveness of current treatments, highlighting the importance of...
Glioblastoma is the most malignant primary brain tumor with the average
patients surviving only one year after diagnosis, even with aggressive therapy. The
formation of numerous micro-tumors dispersed into the brain due to rapid invasion of
tumor cells, presents the primary challenge to the surgical removal of tumors and
limits...
Glioblastoma multiforme is a form of primary brain cancer in humans with a 5 year survival rate of less than 4%. Glioblastoma cells are characterized by their highly invasive nature linked to mutations in key signaling proteins such as PTEN, resulting in loss of expression of this lipid phosphatase. When...
The cysteine-rich protein (CRP) family is a subgroup of LIM domain proteins. CRP1, which cross-links actin filaments to make actin bundles, is the only CRP family member expressed in the CNS with little known about its function in nerve cells. Here, we report that CRP1 colocalizes with actin in the...
Fluorinated alkyl substances, which can be persistent, toxic, and
bioaccumulative, have been quantitated in many densely populated and
remote regions, including in air, surface waters, groundwater, and biota;
however, little is known about their transport or behavior in the environment.
Wastewater effluent is one of the principal routes for introducing...
Natural products from both terrestrial and marine sources represent a significant source of novel drug leads, and have previously been developed into clinically-approved agents for the treatment of various human diseases. This work represents the biological characterization of the mechanistic basis for activity of several natural product structures in models...
Hallmarks of aging include the accumulation of aberrant proteins and a lower resistance to stresses. Because the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) functions to fold proteins and possesses unique stress sensing pathways, the central hypothesis of this dissertation is that the ER is a target of cellular aging and significantly underlies these...
Phospholipase C-β (PLC-β) isozymes are key effectors in G protein-coupled
signaling pathways. Prior research suggested that some isoforms of PLC-β may exist
and function as dimers, but little is known about dimerization of PLC-β. Data from coimmunoprecipitation
assays of differentially-tagged PLC-β constructs and sizeexclusion
chromatography of native PLC-β support homodimerization...
Glutathione (GSH) is the predominant low molecular weight thiol antioxidant
in liver tissue. GSH plays an important role in maintaining the intracellular thiol redox
ratio as well as detoxification of electrophiles and xenobiotics. Aging leads to a significant decline (35%; P ≤ 0.05) in hepatocellular GSH levels. Using young (2-4...