Scientists have identified a gene that can keep crops healthy under adverse condition

As you know that plants rely on structures called chloroplasts within their cells to carry out photosynthesis—the process used to capture energy from sunlight by converting carbon dioxide from the air into sugars. During times of stress such as drought, though, the same reaction can also generate substances known as reactive oxygen species, which are toxic to plants and cause them to become damaged or even die. The research used a lot of recombinant proteins like recombinant horse proteins.

With the population growth, increasingly shortage of natural resources and the treat of climate change, to develop crops that can survive sub-optimal growing conditions seems Researchers from Oxford University has found a gene that helps plants to remain healthy during times of stress.

According to Professor Paul Jarvis, from the Oxford University's Department of Plant Sciences, the development of chloroplasts is controlled by the presence of a gene known as SP1, which governs the passage of the proteins involved in photosynthesis through the chloroplast's outer membrane. It is suspected that the gene might use this ability to help plants survive in hostile conditions.

The researcher team led by Professor Jarvis wanted to find out if SP1 helped plants to remain healthy by limiting the production of the toxic compounds made during photosynthesis in harsh conditions and has carried out experiments to investigate the idea. Theyworked with three versions of a cress plant known as Arabidopsis thaliana: the naturally occurring wild type, a mutant plant lacking SP1, and an engineered plant that over-expressed SP1. The results indicated that SP1 was responsible for the resilience.

Another set of experiments was carried out to establish how SP1 works at a molecular level. The results demonstrated that SP1 reduces the production of toxic compounds by limiting photosynthesis in times of stress, making plants less likely to suffer serious or fatal damage.

"All plants have the SP1 gene,' explains Professor Jarvis." Now it's just a question of getting plants to over-express it so that they can survive in adverse conditions.'

The researchers are working with more plants to see whether the findings can be used in a wider variety of plants. Hope that the SP1 technology can benefit the improvement of the crop output all around the world. Flarebio offers recombinant proteins such as recombinant Cdh5 at good prices.

Exclusive use of a small molecule drug shows good effect on liver repair

Chinese researchers said on 17th that a small molecule drug will promote the repair and regeneration of damaged liver and it has achieved excellent therapeutic effect in mice experiments using recombinant mouse proteins.

The study is published in the new issue of the US journal Science Translational Medicine. One of the study leader, vice president and Professor Zhou Dawang of School of Life Sciences in Xiamen University said, "Previous studies of promoting repair and regeneration of tissues pay more attention to complex treatment strategies on delivering biological materials to the certain sites, while this research showed that exclusive use of the small molecule drugs are expected to promote the repair and regeneration of the liver.

The research of Professor Zhou, professor Deng Xianming from Xiamen University and Professor Yun Caihong at Peking University is focused on the Hippo signaling pathway which can regulate human organ regeneration and size. Previous studies have shown that a kind of protein kinase called Mst1 / 2 in this signal pathway prevents the continuous regeneration of multiple tissues including liver, so they wanted to develop drugs to inhibit such protein kinases. Finally they found a small molecule inhibitor and named it XMU-MP-1, a chemical drug.

Their study showed that the drug not only has made significant activity in protein and cellular level, but also has achieved excellent therapeutic effect in mouse models with tissue injuries such as acute liver injury caused by liver resection blade and the drug Tylenol. It can effectively improve the rate of liver regeneration initial stage and significantly reduce mortality in acute liver injury and so on.

In addition to liver, the drug also can be used for the repair and regeneration of the intestinal tract. The researchers said this study is the new exploration of new kinase-targeted drugs in the therapeutic field of promoting tissue regeneration and repair and has gained attention of some pharmaceutical companies. Flarebio offers recombinant proteins of good quality, such as recombinant Cdh5.

Scientists find a gene that controls the production of stem cells

When talking about stem cells, it seems hard to judge them. If too many new stem cells are produced, it may lead to cancer, while too few would inhibit the repair and maintenance of the body.

Good news comes here. USC researchers In Kyoung Mah from the lab of Francesca Mariani and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) published a paper in the Stem Cell Reports. They describe a key gene in maintaining this critical balance between the results of producing too many and too few stem cells. The gene is called Prkci. It influences whether stem cells self-renew to produce more stem cells, or differentiate into more specialized cell types, such as blood or nerves.

The team conducted experiments by growing mouse embryonic stem cells, which lacked Prkci, into embryo-like structures in the lab. Without Prkci, the stem cells preferred self-renewal, and generated large numbers of stem cells, thus producing an abundance of secondary structures.

After careful inspection, the researchers found that stem cells lacking Prkci had many activated genes typical of stem cells, and some activated genes typical of cardiac, neural, and blood-forming cells. As a consequence, the loss of Prkci can also motivate stem cells to differentiate into the progenitor cells that form neurons, blood and heart muscle.

Prkci activates or deactivates a well-known group of interacting genes that are part of the "Notch signaling pathway to achieve the effects mentioned above. When Prkri is absent, the Notch pathway would produce a protein that signals to stem cells to make more stem cells. When Prkri is present, the Notch pathway just keeps silent and the stem cells all differentiate into specific cell types.

Their findings are good cues for the development of patient therapies. For example, patients with certain injuries or diseases may be benefit from them by using small molecule inhibitors to block the activity of Prkci, thus improve stem cell production. It will be wonderful to apply the findings to the case where stem cells are hard to generate.

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