Molecular Biology and Genetics / Moleküler Biyoloji ve Genetik

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11147/9

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Article
    Mrna Decay Analysis in Drosophila Melanogaster: Drug-Induced Changes in Glutathione S-Transferase D21 Mrna Stability
    (Academic Press Inc., 2008) Akgül, Bünyamin; Tu, Chen-Pei D.
    We have established an in vivo system to investigate mechanisms by which pentobarbital (PB), a psychoactive drug with a sedative effect, changes the rate of decay of gstD21 mRNA (encoding a Drosophila glutathione S-transferase). Here we describe methods for the use of hsp70 promoter-based transgenes and transgenic lines to determine mRNA half-lives by RNase protection assays in Drosophila. We are able to identify and map putative decay intermediates by cRT-PCR and DNA sequencing of the resulting clones. Our results indicate that the 3′-UTR of gstD21 mRNA is responsive to PB by regulating mRNA decay and that the cis-acting element(s) responsible for the PB-mediated stabilization resides in a 59 nucleotide sequence in the 3′-UTR of the gstD21 mRNA (Akgül and Tu, 2007).
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 19
    Citation - Scopus: 22
    Absence of Superoxide Dismutase Activity Causes Nuclear Dna Fragmentation During the Aging Process
    (Academic Press Inc., 2014) Muid, Khandaker Ashfaqul; Karakaya, Hüseyin Çaglar; Koç, Ahmet
    Superoxide dismutases (SOD) serve as an important antioxidant defense mechanism in aerobic organisms, and deletion of these genes shortens the replicative life span in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Even though involvement of superoxide dismutase enzymes in ROS scavenging and the aging process has been studied extensively in different organisms, analyses of DNA damages has not been performed for replicatively old superoxide dismutase deficient cells. In this study, we investigated the roles of SOD1, SOD2 and CCS1 genes in preserving genomic integrity in replicatively old yeast cells using the single cell comet assay. We observed that extend of DNA damage was not significantly different among the young cells of wild type, sod1Δ and sod2Δ strains. However, ccs1Δ mutants showed a 60% higher amount of DNA damage in the young stage compared to that of the wild type cells. The aging process increased the DNA damage rates 3-fold in the wild type and more than 5-fold in sod1Δ, sod2Δ, and ccs1Δ mutant cells. Furthermore, ROS levels of these strains showed a similar pattern to their DNA damage contents. Thus, our results confirm that cells accumulate DNA damages during the aging process and reveal that superoxide dismutase enzymes play a substantial role in preserving the genomic integrity in this process.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 119
    Citation - Scopus: 121
    Structure of Halothiobacillus Neapolitanus Carboxysomes by Cryo-Electron Tomography
    (Academic Press Inc., 2006) Schmid, Michael F.; Paredes, Angel M.; Khant, Htet A.; Soyer Dönmez, Ferda; Aldrich, Henry C.; Chiu, Wah; Shively, Jessup M.
    Carboxysomes are polyhedral bodies consisting of a proteinaceous shell filled with ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO). They are found in the cytoplasm of all cyanobacteria and some chemoautotrophic bacteria. Previous studies of Halothiobacillus neapolitanus and Nitrobacter agilis carboxysomes suggest that the structures are either icosahedral or dodecahedral. To determine the protein shell structure more definitively, purified H. neapolitanus carboxysomes were re-examined by cryo-electron tomography and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Due to the limited tilt angles in the electron microscope, the tomographic reconstructions are distorted. Corrections were made in the 3D orientation searching and averaging of the computationally extracted carboxysomes to minimize the missing data effects. It was found that H. neapolitanus carboxysomes vary widely in size and mass as shown by cryo-electron tomography and STEM mass measurements, respectively. We have aligned and averaged carboxysomes in several size classes from the 3D tomographic reconstruction by methods that are not model-biased. The averages reveal icosahedral symmetry of the shell, but not of the density inside it, for all the size classes