• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.199-205
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• 1998

The present study was performed to analyze the expression of LH genes in the rat ovary. Expression of LH subunit genes in the rat ovary was demonstrated by amplification of ovarian RNA by RT-PCR. The ovarian $LH_\beta$ transcripts contained at least two parts of the published cDNA structure, the pituitary exons 1, 2 and 3 and the part of testicular ex on 1 in the major trancripts form in rat testis. Using RIA, significant amount of LH-like molecules were detected in crude ovarian extracts, and the competition curves with increasing amount of tissue extracts were parallel with those of standard peptide, indicating that the ovarian immunoreactive LH-like material is similar to authentic pituitary LH molecule. The administration of PMSG to immature rats resulted in a sharp decrease of the ovarian LH contents after 24 h post-injection. In conclusion, these findings demonstrate that genes for LH subunits are expressed in the rat ovary, and suggest that LH can playa central role in regulation of female reproduction with both endocrine (by pituitary LH) and auto- and/or para-crine (by ovarian LH) manner.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.361-369
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• 2020

Tofacitinib, a Janus kinase inhibitor, was developed for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Recently, it has been associated with an increased change in arthritis development in patients with diabetes. Herein, we evaluated the pharmacokinetics of tofacitinib after intravenous (10 mg/kg) and oral (20 mg/kg) administration to rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus and control rats. Following intravenous administration of tofacitinib to rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus, area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time zero to infinity of tofacitinib was significantly smaller (33.6%) than that of control rats. This might be due to the faster hepatic intrinsic clearance (112%) caused by an increase in the hepatic cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A1(23) and the faster hepatic blood flow rate in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus than in control rats. Following oral administration, area under the plasma concentration-time curve from time zero to infinity of tofacitinib was also significantly smaller (55.5%) in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus than that in control rats. This might be due to decreased absorption caused by the higher expression of P-glycoprotein and the faster intestinal metabolism caused by the higher expression of intestinal CYP3A1(23), which resulted in the decreased bioavailability of tofacitinib (33.0%) in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus. In summary, our findings indicate that diabetes mellitus affects the absorption and metabolism of tofacitinib, causing faster metabolism and decreased intestinal absorption in rats with streptozotocin-induced diabetes mellitus.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.1479-1484
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• 2010

Photosynthesis uses light energy to drive the oxidation of water at an oxygen-evolving catalytic site within photosystem II (PSII). Chlorophyll binding by the photosystem II subunit S protein, PsbS, was found to be necessary for energy-dependent quenching (qE), the major energy-dependent component of non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) in Arabidopsis thaliana. It is proposed that PsbS acts as a trigger of the conformational change that leads to the establishment of nonphotochemical quenching. However, the exact structure and function of PsbS in PSII are still unknown. Here, we clone and express the recombinant PsbS gene from Arabidopsis thaliana in E. coli and purify the resulting homogeneous protein. We used various biochemical and biophysical techniques to elucidate PsbS structure and function, including circular dichroism (CD), fluorescence, and DSC. The protein shows optimal stability at $4^{\circ}C$ and pH 7.5. The CD spectra of PsbS show that the conformational changes of the protein were strongly dependent on pH conditions. The CD curve for PsbS at pH 10.5 curve had the deepest negative peak and the peak of PsbS at pH 4.5 was the least negative. The fluorescence emission spectrum of the purified PsbS protein was also measured, and the ${\lambda}_{max}$ was found to be at 328 nm. PsbS revealed some structural changes under varying temperature and oxygen gas condition.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.18.1-18.8
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• 2015

Background: Quantitative real time reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) is one of the most important techniques for gene-expression analysis in molecular based studies. Selecting a proper internal control gene for normalizing data is a crucial step in gene expression analysis via this method. The expression levels of reference genes should be remained constant among cells in different tissues. However, it seems that the location of cells in different tissues might influence their expression. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has any effect on expression level of three common reference genes (GAPDH, ${\beta}$-actin and ${\beta}2$-microglobulin) in equine marrow- and adipose-derived undifferentiated MSCs and consequently their reliability for comparative qRT-PCR. Materials and methods: Adipose tissue (AT) and bone marrow (BM) samples were harvested from 3 mares. MSCs were isolated and cultured until passage 3 (P3). Total RNA of P3 cells was extracted for cDNA synthesis. The generated cDNAs were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR. The PCR reactions were ended with a melting curve analysis to verify the specificity of amplicon. Results: The expression levels of GAPDH were significantly different between AT- and BM-derived MSCs (p < 0.05). Differences in expression level of ${\beta}$-actin (P < 0.001) and B2M (P < 0.006.) between MSCs derived from AT and BM were substantially higher than GAPDH. In addition, the fold change in expression levels of GAPDH, ${\beta}$-actin and B2M in AT-derived MSCs compared to BM-derived MSCs were 2.38, 6.76 and 7.76, respectively. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that GAPDH and especially ${\beta}$-actin and B2M express in different levels in equine AT- and BM-derived MSCs. Thus they cannot be considered as reliable reference genes for comparative quantitative gene expression analysis in MSCs derived from equine bone marrow and adipose tissue.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.871-876
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• 2014

Objective: Desmogleins (DSGs) are major members among the desmosomal cadherins critically involved in cell-cell adhesion and the maintenance of normal tissue architecture in epithelia. Reports exploring links of DSG family member expression with cancers are few and vary. The aim of this study was to investigate the ratio of DSG2 and DSG3 mRNA expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) tissue to normal tissue (T/N ratio) and evaluate correlations with clinical parameters. Methods: The mRNA expression of DSGs, as well as ${\gamma}$-catenin and desmoplakin, was detected by real-time quantitative RT-PCR in 85 cases of ESCC tissue specimens. Results: The expression level of DSG3 mRNA was significantly higher than that of DSG2 in ESCC specimens (p=0.000). DSG3 mRNA expression highly correlated with histological grade (p=0.009), whereas that of DSG2 did not significantly relate to any clinicopathologic parameter. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that only DSG3 expression had an impact on the survival curve, with negative DSG3 expression indicating worse survival (p=0.038). Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated DSG3 to be an independent prognostic factor for survival. Furthermore, correlation analysis demonstrated the mRNA level of DSG3 to highly correlate with those of ${\gamma}$-catenin and desmoplakin in ESCC samples (p=0.000), implying that the expression of desmosomal components might be regulated by the same upstream regulatory molecules. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that DSG3 may be involved in the progression of ESCC and serve as a prognostic marker, while expression of DSG2 cannot be used as a predictor of ESCC patient outcome.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.835-838
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• 2016

Background: Lung cancer remains one of the most common cancers in the world, both in terms of new cases (about 13% of total per year) and deaths (nearly one cancer death in five), because of the high case fatality. Errors in lung cancer type or malignant growth determination lead to degraded treatment efficacy, because anticancer strategy depends on tumor morphology. Materials and Methods: We have made an attempt to evaluate effectiveness of machine learning algorithms in the task of lung cancer classification based on gene expression levels. We processed four publicly available data sets. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute data set contains 203 samples and the task was to classify four cancer types and sound tissue samples. With the University of Michigan data set of 96 samples, the task was to execute a binary classification of adenocarcinoma and non-neoplastic tissues. The University of Toronto data set contains 39 samples and the task was to detect recurrence, while with the Brigham and Women's Hospital data set of 181 samples it was to make a binary classification of malignant pleural mesothelioma and adenocarcinoma. We used the k-nearest neighbor algorithm (k=1, k=5, k=10), naive Bayes classifier with assumption of both a normal distribution of attributes and a distribution through histograms, support vector machine and C4.5 decision tree. Effectiveness of machine learning algorithms was evaluated with the Matthews correlation coefficient. Results: The support vector machine method showed best results among data sets from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital. All algorithms with the exception of the C4.5 decision tree showed maximum potential effectiveness in the University of Michigan data set. However, the C4.5 decision tree showed best results for the University of Toronto data set. Conclusions: Machine learning algorithms can be used for lung cancer morphology classification and similar tasks based on gene expression level evaluation.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.7315-7319
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• 2013

Background: The metastasis gene osteopontin (OPN) is subject to alternative splicing, which yields three messages, osteopontin-a, osteopontin-b and osteopontin-c. Osteopontin-c is selectively expressed in invasive, but not in noninvasive tumors. In the present study, we examined the expression of OPN-c in esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCCs) and assessed its value as a diagnostic biomarker. Methods: OPN-c expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry in 63 ESCC samples and correlated with clinicopathologic factors. Expression was also examined in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 120 ESCC patients and 30 healthy subjects. The role of OPN-c mRNA as a tumor marker was investigated by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis. Results: Immunohistochemistry showed that OPN-c was expressed in 30 of 63 cancer lesions (48%)and significantly associated with pathological T stage (P=0.038) and overall stage (P=0.023). Real time PCR showed that OPN-c mRNA was expressed at higher levels in the PBMCs of ESCC patients than in those of healthy subjects (P<0.0001) with a sensitivity as an ESCC biomarker of 86.7%. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that expression of OPN-c is significantly elevated in ESCCs and this upregulation could be a potential diagnostic marker.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.323-333
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• 2016

Background: Ovarian cancer remains a major worldwide health care issue due to the lack of satisfactory diagnostic methods for early detection of the disease. Prior studies on the role of serum cancer antigen 125 (CA125) and human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) in detecting ovarian cancer presented conflicting results. New tools to improve the accuracy of identifying malignancy are urgently needed. We here aimed to evaluate the diagnostic utility of tissue CA125 and HE4 gene expression in comparison to serum CA125 and HE4 in discriminating benign from malignant pelvic masses. Materials and Methods: One-hundred Egyptian women were enrolled in this study, including 60 epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients and 20 benign ovarian tumor patients, as well as 20 apparently healthy women. Preoperative serum levels of CA125 and HE4 were measured by immunoassays. Tissue expression levels of genes encoding CA125 and HE4 were determined by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The diagnostic performance of CA125 and HE4, measured either as mRNA or protein levels, was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: The serum CA125+HE4 combination and serum HE4, with area under the curve (AUC) values of 0.935 and 0.932, respectively, performed significantly better than serum CA125 (AUC=0.592; P<0.001). Tissue CA125 and HE4 (AUC=1) performed significantly better than serum CA125 (P<0.001), serum HE4 (P=0.016) and the serum CA125+HE4 combination (P=0.018). Conclusions: Measurement of tissue CA125 and HE4 gene expression not only improves discriminatory performance, but also broadens the range of differential diagnostic possibilities in distinguishing EOC from benign ovarian tumors.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.9
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• pp.1593-1600
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• 2014

Adsorption and desorption characteristics of the representative 10 kinds components consisting of gasoline vapor on activated carbon were investigated at the temperature range of $-30^{\circ}C{\sim}25^{\circ}C$. The breakthrough curves of each vapors obtained by the Thomas model were well described the breakthrough experimental results of this study. The breakthrough times of each vapors were correlated with the molecular weight, density, and vapor pressure. The breakthrough times had greater correlation with boiling point than molecular weight and density. The slope of the breakthrough curve was a proportional relationship with the rate constant (k) of Thomas model expression. The higher the slope of the breakthrough curve, the rate constant was larger. The biggest slope vapor had the smallest adsorption capacity ($q_e$). Adsorption and desorption characteristics of mixed vapor similar to the gasoline vapor were studied at room temperature ($25^{\circ}C$). The mixed vapor consisting of 9 components; group A (pentane, hexene, hexane), group B (benzene, toluene), group C (octane, ethylbenzene, xylene, nonane) was examined. Group A was not nearly adsorbed because of substitution by group C, and the desorption capacity of group A was smaller than group C. The adsorbed substances were confirmed to be Group C.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.324-330
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is on the meaning and variety about gender expressed in modern fashion. The results are as follows ; First, the typical masculine gender was authority, discretion as a result of heteropatriarchy focused on the western reason. It was conservative and the symbolic image type of the meaning excluded masculine sexual expression. Dress and its ornament was expressed as the style of straight silhouette, dark color, rough and stiff material. Second, the typical feminine gender was the symbolic image type of a mother and a wife defined relatively by man as a result of western heteropatriarchy and the image type which men regarded women as sexual objects. Dress and its ornament was expressed as the style of silhouette which let bodily curve out, light color, soft material. The most typical item is dress and suit. Third, androgyny has been described as the feminie gender of androgynous, which shows masculine image as the effect of feminism and social success of professional women. Dress and its ornament is expressed as the style of business suit, the symple of typical man's one. The masculine gender of androgynous is showed man's suit as silhouette that let bodily curve out, light color, exposure and soft material, which is the symbol of feminine dress, Fourth, unisex is the area of dress and its ornament used the sexless symbol which there has been no gender more because of the spread of sports and diffusion of leisure in life style.