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Chemical Synthetic Biology projects: Never Born Biopolymers and synthetic cells.
No full text“Chemical” synthetic biology can be defined as a branch of synthetic biology focused on the synthesis of chemical structures alternative to those present in nature. Here we present two chemical synthetic biology projects, namely (1) the Never Born Biopolymers and (2) the Synthetic Minimal Cells. The first project aims at identifying and constructing biopolymers like nucleic acids and proteins that do not exist in nature and that display biological-like functions. The goal of the second project is instead focused on the assembly of cell-like structures, based on liposomes, that behave like simple cells. The concepts and the experimental approaches concerning these projects are shortly summarized and discussed
Induction of erythroid differentiation of human K562 cells by cisplatin analogs
No full textHuman leukemic K562 cells can be induced in vitro to erythroid differentiation by a variety of chemical compounds, including hemin, butyric acid, 5-azacytidine, and cytosine arabinoside. Differentiation of K562 cells is associated with an increase in the expression of embryo-fetal globin genes, such as the zeta-, epsilon-, and gamma-globin genes. Therefore, the K562 cell line has been proposed as a very useful in vitro model system for determining the therapeutic potential of new differentiating compounds as well as for studying the molecular mechanism(s) regulating changes in the expression of embryonic and fetal human globin genes. Inducers of erythroid differentiation that stimulate gamma-globin synthesis could be considered for possible use in the experimental therapy of hematological diseases associated with a failure in the expression of adult beta-globin genes. In this paper, we analyzed the effects of a series of cisplatin analogs on both cell growth and differentiation of K562 cells. Among seven cisplatin analogs studied, three were found to be potent inducers of erythroid differentiation. Erythroid differentiation was associated with an increase in the accumulation of (a) hemoglobins Gower 1 and Portland and (b) gamma-globin mRNA
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
Sintesi e proprietà biologiche di esteri glucidici attivi come induttori del differenziamento eritroide.
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