Past Issues in 2016

Cancer tissue is composed of cancer cells and a large number of stromal cells including fibroblasts. In order to understand the relationship between fibroblasts and cancer cells during invasion of the stroma, 3D gel invasion assay is useful. Most tumors are associated with a biologically active type of fibroblasts known as cancer-associated ...

The Drosophila melanogaster trachea is a branched network of rigid chitin-lined tubes that ramify throughout the body and functions as the fly’s respiratory organ. Small openings at the ends of the tracheal tubes allow gas exchange to occur by diffusion between internal tissues and the exterior environment. Tracheal ...

Mitochondria are essential regulators in not only ATP generation and metabolic reprogramming but also the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in response to pathogenic stimuli. During exposure to environmental stresses including oxidative stress, exercise, cell division and caloric restriction, mitochondria can be divided to increase ...

Studying protein-protein interaction is crucial to understand the fundamental processes of molecular biology. High-throughput screening, such as immunoprecipitation followed by proteomic analysis, allows for the identification of numerous candidate partners that might interact with a selected protein. However, experimental validation of ...

Olfactory memory is an ethologically relevant task that relies on a mouse’s innate ability to use olfaction to forage for food (Zou et al., 2015), and identify safe foods. Although many of the same brain areas involved in other forms of memory are also involved in olfactory memory, the mechanisms are different (Sanchez-Andrade et al. ...

Social recognition memory is essential for the establishment and maintenance of a rodent colony. Recognition memory is important for social hierarchy, mate and offspring recognition, and interspecies recognition. Interspecies recognition is vital for recognizing frequent visitors to the animal’s habitat and whether or not the visitors pose a ...

The Arabidopsis thaliana seed coat epidermis produces copious amounts of mucilage polysaccharides (Haughn and Western, 2012). Characterization of mucilage mutants has identified novel genes required for cell wall biosynthesis and modification (North et al., 2014). The biochemical analysis of seed mucilage is essential to evaluate ...

The Arabidopsis thaliana seed coat produces large amounts of cell wall polysaccharides, which swell out of the epidermal cells upon hydration of the mature dry seeds. While most mucilage polymers immediately diffuse in the surrounding solution, the remaining fraction tightly adheres to the seed, forming a dense gel-like capsule (Macquet ...

Auxin is a major growth hormone in plants and the first plant hormone to be discovered and studied (Darwin and Darwin, 1880). The auxin molecule in plants was first identified as indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) by Kögl et al. (1934). Active research over nearly a decade has shed light on many of the molecular mechanisms of its action but the ...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), first described in human bone marrow, are emerging as promising cell-based therapeutics for a wide range of diseases (Caplan and Correa, 2011). MSCs have been isolated from various organs in the body, and synovial MSCs were first reported by De Bari et al. (2001). We previously reported that synovial MSCs ...