Diabetes is one of the main causes of death in the world. Diabetes is marked by high blood glucose levels and develops when the body doesn't produce enough insulin or is not able to use insulin effectively, or both. Type I diabetes is a chronic sickness caused by lack of insulin due to the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic insulin-producing beta cells. Research on permanent cure for diabetes is in progress with several remarkable findings in the past few decades among which stem cell therapy has turned out to be a promising way to cure diabetes. Stem cells have the remarkable potential to differentiate into glucose-responsive beta cells through controlled differentiation protocols. Discovering novel targets that could potentially influence the differentiation to specific cell type will help in disease therapy. The present work focuses on finding novel genes or transcription factors involved in the human embryonic stem cell differentiation into insulin-producing beta cells using network biology approach. The interactome of 321 genes and their associated molecules involved in human embryonic stem cell differentiation into beta cells was constructed, which includes 1937 nodes and 8105 edges with a scale-free topology. Pathway analysis for the hubs obtained through MCODE revealed that four highly interactive hubs were relevant to embryonic stem cell differentiation into insulin-producing cells. Their role in different pathways and stem cell differentiation was studied. Centrality parameters were applied to identify the potential controllers of the differentiation processes: BMP4, SALL4, ZIC1, NTS, RNF2, FOXO1, AKT1 and GATA4. This type of approach gives an insight to identify potential genes/transcription factors which may play influential role in many complex biological processes.
Synthetic sialic acid analogues with multiple modifications at different positions(C-1/C-2/C-4/C-8/C-9) are investigated by molecular mechanics and molecular dynamics to determine their conformational preferences and structural stability to interact with their natural receptors. Sialic acids with multiple modifications are soaked in a periodic box of water as solvent. Molecular mechanics and a 2 nanosecond molecular dynamics are done using amber force fields with 30 picosecond equilibrium. Direct and water mediated hydrogen bonds existing in the sialic acid analogues, aiding for their structural stabilization are identified in this study. The accessible conformations of side chain linkages of sialic acid analogues holding multiple substituents are determined from molecular dynamics trajectory at every 1ps interval. Transitions between different minimum energy regions in conformational maps are also noticed in C-1, C-2, C-4, C-8 and C-9 substituents. Docking studies were done to find the binding mode of the sialic acid analogues with Influenza hemagglutinin. This finding provides stereo chemical explanation and conformational preference of sialic acid analogues which may be crucial for the design of sialic acid analogues as inhibitors for different sialic acid specific pathogenic proteins such as influenza toxins and neuraminidases.
The blister blight (BB) and grey blight (GB) diseases are the major biotic stresses, which affecting the plant health, yield and quality of tea. The study aims to understand the gene response of tea plants against destructing foliar diseases in terms of differential gene expression and their pathways through microarray analysis aid by MapMan® software. The results of expression profile analysis showed that 235 in BB and 258 for GB genes were differentially expressed (at P<0.05) which involving in gene regulatory function as biotic stress response. Similarly, 76 and 86 differentially expressed genes involving in cellular response during BB and GB diseases, respectively. However, 28 in BB and 9 in GB differentially expressed (P<0.01) genes were putatively involved in biotic stress response. The study also identified differentially expressed 75 transcription factors (TFs) belongs to 23 TFs superfamily act as either transcriptional activators or repressors. The study helps to understand the differential gene expression pattern and its cellular, molecular and biological mechanisms of tea plants of two different diseases based on microarray analysis. Further studies using biotechnological tools on the stress-responsive genes in the germplasm may enable us for development of disease resistance.
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