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Biochemical Markers in Ophthalmology
Published in Ching-Yu Cheng, Tien Yin Wong, Ophthalmic Epidemiology, 2022
Abdus Samad Ansari, Pirro G. Hysi
In living organisms, health is maintained through complex homeostatic biological processes, involving hundreds of thousands of proteins, enzymatic and metabolic pathways processing various organic compounds, nutrients, and energy. These processes are partly genetically determined but may vary widely as a result of both DNA sequence diversity and the surrounding environment which interacts with the genome. Impairment of these processes leads to quantitative or qualitative changes in the levels of biochemical compounds in specific cells, tissues, or body compartments, which may ultimately result in disease. Measuring the levels of specific biochemical compounds in cells and body tissues may often be a superior method to monitor health and disease than early clinical symptoms or other objective findings.
Drug Repurposing and Novel Antiviral Drugs for COVID-19 Management
Published in Debmalya Barh, Kenneth Lundstrom, COVID-19, 2022
Shailendra Dwivedi, Aakanksha Rawat, Amit Ranjan, Ruchika Agrawal, Radhieka Misra, Sunil Kumar Gupta, Surekha Kishore, Sanjeev Misra
Drug repurposing generally follows two concepts. Either a single drug interacts with several targets, which provide a way to investigate new target sites of action for the available compound, or targets associated with an illness are commonly relevant to a number of biological processes of pathogenesis. Thus the search for repurposing drugs was centered around the causal agent, which is a coronavirus, and common symptoms including inflammation, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with many others.
Dietary Influence on Muscle Protein Synthesis and Hypertrophy
Published in Peter M. Tiidus, Rebecca E. K. MacPherson, Paul J. LeBlanc, Andrea R. Josse, The Routledge Handbook on Biochemistry of Exercise, 2020
James McKendry, Stuart M. Phillips
The quest to unravel the complex control of important biological processes has been at the forefront of scientific research for many years. Following the discovery of rapamycin, in 1964 (93), a series of seminal studies utilized a genetic screen to identify genetic mutants (55) and determined that peptidyl-prolyl-isomerase FKBP12 was the cellular receptor for rapamycin (92). Furthermore, two targets of rapamycin (TOR) genes (TOR1 and TOR2) that encoded for two large kinases that resembled phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3-K) were identified (67), successfully pinpointing the biochemical mechanism of action. These significant breakthroughs paved the way for a plethora of research studies focused on TOR, and it is now understood that mTOR is an evolutionarily conserved serine/threonine kinase present in two structurally distinct protein complexes (i.e., mTORC1 and mTORC2). Both complexes play pivotal roles as integration hubs of numerous physiological stimuli. However, attention will be directed towards mTORC1-dependent mechanisms, as the role of this protein complex is the better characterized of the two protein complexes (68).
Salt-induced phosphoproteomic changes in the subfornical organ in rats with chronic kidney disease
Published in Renal Failure, 2023
Xin Wang, Huizhen Wang, Jiawen Li, Lanying Li, Yifan Wang, Aiqing Li
The complete list of 2661 phosphoproteins corresponding to identified phosphopeptides from SFO in rats with chronic renal failure is depicted in Supplementary Table S2. GO analysis was used to annotate the differential phosphoproteins functionally. As displayed in Figures 2(a,c), the differential phosphoproteins in NC/NS comparison group were classified into 10 categories of molecular functions. Phosphoproteins involved in binding had the highest proportion (56.2%), followed by catalytic activity (17.8%) and molecule function regulation (7.5%). The differential phosphoproteins in HC/NC comparison group were classified into 11 categories of functions, including binding (55.6%), catalytic activity (15.3%), molecule function regulation (7.4%), and so on. In biological process analysis (Figures 2(b,d)), differential phosphoproteins in NC/NS comparison group involved 16 kinds of biological processes. The top three biological processes were cellular process (12.1%), single-organism process (11.1%), and biological regulation (10.1%). In HC/NC comparison group, the differential phosphoproteins were involved in 16 kinds of biological processes, topped by cellular process (11.3%), single-organism process (10.7%), and biological regulation (9.7%). The percentage and number of differential phosphoproteins relevant to molecular functions and biological processes are listed in Supplementary Tables S3 and S4.
Forecasting most deleterious nsSNPs in human TLR9 gene and their cumulative impact on biophysical features of the protein using in silico approaches
Published in Systems Biology in Reproductive Medicine, 2023
Heena Gautam, Ved Vrat Verma, Syed Akhtar Husain, Mausumi Bharadwaj
In the current study, we used TLR9 as the target gene where we found that its expression is changed by numerous mutated genes. Accordingly, the tool predicts the mutations in SOS1, NMT2, EPB41L3, and PZP genes, which might change the gene expression of TLR9 in cervical cancer patients. Further, in a uterine cancer patient, mutations in TP53, AGO1, GRM8, SCAF4, and MROH8 genes change the gene expression of TLR9 (details about potential genes are incorporated in Supplementary Data S2). Since all identified genes are known to play a crucial role in various types of metabolic pathways and biological processes, mutations in these key genes could enhance the possibility to cause various types of cancers. Accordingly, based on the comparative outcomes of muTarget analysis, it is suggested that mutations in any interacting gene partners in the gene-gene network also affect their neighboring genes, which could lead to cancer formation.
Study on the mechanism of lupenone for treating type 2 diabetes by integrating pharmacological evaluation and network pharmacology
Published in Pharmaceutical Biology, 2022
Feng Xu, Mei Zhang, Hongmei Wu, Yuanmin Wang, Ye Yang, Xiangpei Wang
Combining the drug-target network with the biological system network can provide new approaches and strategies for new drug development (Hopkins 2007). Network pharmacological studies have found that LUP improves IR through multiple targets and multiple pathways. The biological process is mainly related to the regulation of cell proliferation, signal transduction, metabolism and cell differentiation. The results suggested that LUP could improve IR by regulating multiple biological processes. The KEGG pathway analysis also showed that LUP improves IR involving multiple signalling pathways, like AGE-RAGE signalling pathway in diabetic complications, IR and type II diabetes mellitus. AGEs play a significant role in the pathogenesis of multiple diabetic complications (Sergi et al. 2021). These results indicated that LUP might be used for the prevention and treatment of T2DM associated complications. Of course, many signalling pathways related to cancer, tumour, atherosclerosis and infection were predicted, indicating that LUP might have various modes of pharmacological activities, which deserves further research.