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Full-Text Articles in Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology

Further Investigation Of The Initiating Mechanism Of The Type I Collagen Glomerulopathy, Matthew James Freese Jan 2022

Further Investigation Of The Initiating Mechanism Of The Type I Collagen Glomerulopathy, Matthew James Freese

MSU Graduate Theses

The progressive accumulation of collagen and other extracellular matrix proteins in the renal mesangium results in fibrosis, glomerulosclerosis, and eventual renal failure. Mice deficient in integrating α2(I) collagen into the type I collagen structure, termed Col1a2-deficient mice, model kidney fibrosis through the condition Type I Collagen Glomerulopathy, because homotrimeric type I collagen accumulates extracellularly in the mesangium of renal glomeruli. Accumulation of homotrimeric type I collagen compresses blood vessels in glomeruli, which reduces filtration, increases pressure, and results in fibrosis. Picrosirius red (PSR) staining was used on Col1a2 deficient and wildtype mice to evaluate collagen deposition. Histological evaluation and …


Glutathionylation/Glutaredoxin Axis And The Regulation Of Epithelial Cell Plasticity And Fibroblast Activation In Airway Fibrosis, Shi Biao Chia Jan 2020

Glutathionylation/Glutaredoxin Axis And The Regulation Of Epithelial Cell Plasticity And Fibroblast Activation In Airway Fibrosis, Shi Biao Chia

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Asthma is a complex lung disorder that affects more than 200 million people across the globe. About 10% of asthmatics have severe disease accompanied by structural airway remodeling, including subepithelial fibrosis, airway smooth muscle cell hyperplasia, goblet metaplasia, and increased vascularization. Oxidative stress has been well-linked to asthma pathogenesis; however, the precise redox mechanisms governing the pathological states are slowly being teased apart in the recent years. Protein S-glutathionylation (PSSG) is a posttranslational modification where a three amino acid-peptide, glutathione, forms a disulfide bond with reactive cysteines of a protein thereby potentially changing the protein’s biological functions. Glutaredoxins are members …


Hepatitis C Virus-Induced Monocyte Differentiation Into Polarized M2 Macrophages Promotes Stellate Cell Activation Via Tgf-Beta, Banishree Saha, Karen Kodys, Gyongyi Szabo May 2017

Hepatitis C Virus-Induced Monocyte Differentiation Into Polarized M2 Macrophages Promotes Stellate Cell Activation Via Tgf-Beta, Banishree Saha, Karen Kodys, Gyongyi Szabo

Gyongyi Szabo

BACKGROUND and AIMS: Monocyte and macrophage (MPhi) activation contributes to the pathogenesis of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Disease pathogenesis is regulated by both liver-resident MPhis and monocytes recruited as precursors of MPhis into the damaged liver. Monocytes differentiate into M1 (classic/proinflammatory) or M2 (alternative/anti-inflammatory) polarized MPhis in response to tissue microenvironment. We hypothesized that HCV-infected hepatoma cells (infected with Japanese fulminant hepatitis-1 [Huh7.5/JFH-1]) induce monocyte differentiation into polarized MPhis. METHODS: Healthy human monocytes were co-cultured with Huh7.5/JFH-1 cells or cell-free virus for 7 days and analyzed for MPhi markers and cytokine levels. A similar analysis was performed on …


Role Of Ddr1 In Pancreatic Cancer, Huocong Huang Aug 2016

Role Of Ddr1 In Pancreatic Cancer, Huocong Huang

Theses & Dissertations

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas are highly malignant cancers, characterized by extensive invasion into surrounding tissues, metastasis to distant organs at a very early stage, and a limited response to therapy. One of the main features of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas is desmoplasia, which leads to extensive deposition of collagen I. We have demonstrated that collagen I can induce epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in pancreatic cancer cells. A hallmark of EMT is an increase in the expression of a mesenchymal cadherin, N-cadherin. Our previous studies have shown that up-regulation of N-cadherin can promote tumor cell invasion and that collagen I-induced EMT is through two …


Viewing The Extracellular Matrix: An Imaging Method For Tissue Engineering, Michael Drakopoulos, Sarah Calve Aug 2015

Viewing The Extracellular Matrix: An Imaging Method For Tissue Engineering, Michael Drakopoulos, Sarah Calve

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The field of regenerative medicine seeks to create replacement tissues and organs, both to repair deficiencies in biological function and to treat structural damage caused by injury. Scaffoldings mimicking extracellular matrix (ECM), the structure to which cells attach to form tissues, have been developed from synthetic polymers and also been prepared by decellularizing adult tissue. However, the structure of ECM undergoes significant remodeling during natural tissue repair, suggesting that ECM-replacement constructs that mirror developing tissues may promote better regeneration than those modeled on adult tissues. This work investigated the effectiveness of a method of viewing the extracellular matrix of developing …