Cultivation of the green seaweed Enteromorpha compressa was performed under natural laboratory spring environmental conditions of temperature, light intensity and photoperiod to study the salinity tolerance of this intertidal green macroalga. Cultivation was carried out under artificial seawater (ASW) of different concentrations (18, 35, 53 and 106 g/l sea salt) compared to the control using natural seawater (NSW). Growth rate and pigment content of the cultivated alga were recorded at regular intervals during the experimental duration. Antioxidant activity of the crude ethanolic extract and its fractions (petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate and acetone) was performed against DPPH radical scavenging assay and compared to

Abstract: E2F6 is a member of the E2F family of transcription factors involved in regulation of a wide variety of genes through both activation and repression. E2F6 has been reported as overexpressed in breast cancers but whether or not this is important for tumor development is unclear. We first checked E2F6 expression in tumor cDNAs and the protein level in a range of breast cancer cell lines. RNA interference-mediated depletion was then used to assess the importance of E2F6 expression in cell lines with regard to cell cycle profile using fluorescence-activated cell sorting and a cell survival assay using (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT). The overexpression of E2F6 was confirmed in breast tumor cDNA samp

The application of physiological oxygen (physoxia) concentrations is becoming increasingly commonplace within a mammalian stem cell culture. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) attract widespread interest for clinical application due to their unique immunomodulatory, multi-lineage potential, and regenerative capacities. Descriptions of the impact of physoxia on global DNA methylation patterns in hMSCs and the activity of enzymatic machinery responsible for its regulation remain limited. Human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-hMSCs, passage 1) isolated in reduced oxygen conditions displayed an upregulation of SOX2 in reduced oxygen conditions vs. air oxygen (21% O2, AO), while no change was noted for either OCT-4 or NA

Objective: The present study investigates whether the exposure to low-power diode laser induces denaturation in red blood cell (RBC) membrane protein composition, and determines the irradiation time for when denaturation of membrane protein process begins. Background: A low-energy laser has been used extensively in medical applications. Several studies indicated significant positive effects of laser therapy on biological systems. In contrast, other studies reported that laser induced unwanted changes in cell structure and biological systems. The present work studied the effect of irradiation time of low-power diode laser on the structure of membrane proteins of human RBCs. Materials and methods: The RBC suspension was divided into five equa

Biotreatment using immobilized cells (IC) technology has proved to be the most promising and most economical approach for the removal of many toxic organic pollutants found in petroleum-refinery wastewater (PRW) such as phenol. This study was undertaken to evaluate the degradation of phenol by Pseudomonas cells individually immobilized in two different bio-carrier matrices including polyvinyl alcohol-guar gum (PVA-GG) and polyvinyl alcohol-agar agar (PVA-AA). Results of batch experiments revealed that complete removal of phenol was attained in the first cycle after 150 min using immobilized cells (IC) in both PVA-GG and PVA-AA. Additional cycles were confirmed to evaluate the validity of recycling beads of immob

          Various assays are used to determine the toxic effects of drugs at cellular levels in vitro.  One of these methods is the dye exclusion assay, which measures membrane integrity in the presence of Trypan blue. Trypan blue the dye which was used in this study to investigate cytotoxic effect of a new Cis –dichloroplatinum (II) complex [(Qu)₂PtCl₂] on the viability of polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs). Three concentrations of platinum complex were prepared (70, 35and 17.5 µg/ ml) and the results revealed that the percentage of cell viability decreased as the platinum complex concentration increased in comparison with control.