Project description:Floral bicolor pigmentation is caused by naturally occurring RNA interference (RNAi) in some cultivars of petunia and dahlia. In both plants, the chalcone synthase gene is highly expressed only in the pigmented region of bicolor petals. However, it remains unknown why RNAi is induced only in the unpigmented region. To elucidate the mechanism of this bicolor pattern formation, we examined the dicing activity of Dicer-like 4 (DCL4), which produces small interfering RNAs essential for RNAi. We showed that the crude extract in the pigmented region inhibits DCL4 activity, but not when flavonoids were depleted from the extract. Moreover, we showed the inhibitory activity was associated with flavonoid aglycons. The in vivo dicing activities were detected in the intact protoplasts prepared from the unpigmented region but not from the pigmented region. These results suggest that in the unpigmented region, flavonoids that inhibit DCL4 are not synthesized, and RNAi is maintained, whereas in the pigmented region, DCL4 (RNAi) is inhibited by flavonoids and anthocyanin biosynthesis is maintained. The results of small RNA-seq analyses of bicolor petals and exogenous flavonoid application experiments support this conclusion. Therefore, a clear bicolor pattern is generated by the bidirectional feedforward mechanism of antagonizing DCL4 and flavonoids.
Project description:Using LC-MS/MS, we analyzed ECM-enriched samples obtained from 1) human triple-negative breast cancer samples and matched adjacent normal mammary gland tissues, and 2) disease-free omentum from patient with non-metastatic ovarian cancer and high-grade- serous-ovarian- cancer-derived omental metastasis samples. We conducted the LC-MS/MS analysis on peptides obtained after solubilizing ECM-enriched samples using different methods (crude ECM extract, urea-soluble extract, urea-insoluble extract) and submitted to basic-reversed- phase separation or not.
Project description:We investigated the effects of the crude extract of a South African medicinal plant, Cotyledon orbiculata, on cell survival of colon (HCT116) cancer cell lines. Using RNASeq, we discovered that the extract interfered with mRNA regulatory pathways. Here, we found that the extract of Cotyledon orbiculata, a South African medicinal plant, had an anti-proliferative effect in cancer cells, mediated by apoptosis induced by alternative splicing of hnRNPA2B1 and BCL2L1.