1,721,030 research outputs found
Experimental colitis: decreased Octn2 and Atb0+ expression in rat colonocytes induces carnitine depletion that is reversible by catnitine-loaded liposomes.
No full textCarnitine transporters have recently been implicated in susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Because carnitine is required for beta-oxidation, it was suggested that decreased carnitine transporters, and hence reduced carnitine uptake, could lead to impaired fatty acid oxidation in intestinal epithelial cells, and to cell injury. We investigated this issue by examining the expression of the carnitine transporters OCTN2 and ATB0+, and butyrate metabolism in colonocytes in a rat model of IBD induced by trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS). We found that Octn2 and Atb0+ expression was decreased in inflammatory samples at translational and functional level. Butyrate oxidation, evaluated based on CO2 production and acetyl-coenzyme A synthesis, was deranged in colonocytes from TNBS-treated rats. Treatment with carnitine-loaded liposomes corrected the butyrate metabolic alterations in vitro and reduced the severity of colitis in vivo. These results suggest that carnitine depletion in colonocytes is associated with the inability of mitochondria to maintain normal butyrate beta-oxidation. Our data indicate that carnitine is a rate-limiting factor for the maintenance of physiological butyrate oxidation in colonic cells. This hypothesis could also explain the contradictory therapeutic efficacy of butyrate supplementation observed in clinical trials of IBD.-D'Argenio, G., Calvani, M., Casamassimi, A., Petillo, O., Margarucci, S., Rienzo, M., Peluso, I., Calvani, R., Ciccodicola, A., Caporaso, N., and Peluso, G. Experimental colitis: decreased Octn2 and Atb0+ expression in rat colonocytes induces carnitine depletion that is reversible by carnitine-loaded liposomes
ANALYSIS OF POLYMORPHISMS OF THE NUCLEAR RECEPTOR PPARG GENE IN OBESE INDIVIDUALS FROM SOUTHERN ITALY
No full textNutritional genomics era: opportunities toward a genome-tailored nutritional regimen
No full textThere is increasing evidence indicating that nutritional genomics represents a promise to improve public health. This goal will be reached by highlighting the mechanisms through which diet can reduce the risk of monogenic and common polygenic diseases. Indeed, nutrition is a very relevant environmental factor involved in the development and progression of metabolic disorders, as well as other kind of diseases. The revolutionary changes in the field of genomics have led to the development and implementation of new technologies and molecular tools. These technologies have a useful application in the nutritional sciences, since they allow a more precise and accurate analysis of biochemical alterations, in addition to filling fundamental gaps in the knowledge of nutrient-genome interactions in both health and disease. Overall, these advances will open undiscovered ways in genome-customized diets for disease prevention and therapy. This review summarizes the recent knowledge concerning this novel nutritional approach, paying attention to the human genome variations, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variations, gene expression and innovative molecular tools to reveal them. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Transcriptional Regulation: Molecules, Involved Mechanisms, and Misregulation
Full text linkTranscriptional regulation is a critical biological process that allows the cell or an organism to respond to a variety of intra- and extra-cellular signals, to define cell identity during development, to maintain it throughout its lifetime, and to coordinate cellular activity [...]
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