Systems and Synthetic Biology最新文献

Transforming growth factor-betas (TGF-βs) and their family members that include bone morphogenic proteins and activins have been implicated in the regulation of proliferation, hibernation, quiescence and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). Increasing evidence suggests that the superfamily of TGF-βs play an integral role in the intercellular cross-talk between the stem cells and their microenvironment as well as within the cells at an intracellular level. Active sites of hematopoiesis, such as fetal liver and bone marrow are known to have abundant presence of TGF-β indicating their importance in the maintenance and regulation of hematopoiesis. One of the striking features of TGF-β superfamily is the variety of effects they evoke, contingent on the developing history of the responding cells. In the present review, we discuss the Smad-dependent and Smad-independent TGF-β signaling pathways in order to understand and underscore their role in the regulation of HSCs.

Systems biology addresses challenges in the analysis of genomics data, especially for complex genes and protein interactions using Meta data approach on various signaling pathways. In this paper, we report systems biology and biological circuits approach to construct pathway and identify early gene and protein interactions for predicting GPR142 responses in Type 2 diabetes. The information regarding genes, proteins and other molecules involved in Type 2 diabetes were retrieved from literature and kinetic simulation of GPR142 was carried out in order to determine the dynamic interactions. The major objective of this work was to design a GPR142 biochemical pathway using both systems biology as well as biological circuits synthetically. The term 'synthetically' refers to building biological circuits for cell signaling pathway especially for hormonal pathway disease. The focus of the paper is on logical components and logical circuits whereby using these applications users can create complex virtual circuits. Logic gates process represents only true or false and investigates whether biological regulatory circuits are active or inactive. The basic gates used are AND, NAND, OR, XOR and NOT gates and Integrated circuit composition of many such basic gates and some derived gates. Biological circuits may have a futuristic application in biomedical sciences which may involve placing a micro chip in human cells to modulate the down or up regulation of hormonal disease.

MicroRNAs are a ~22 nucleotide small non-coding RNAs found in animals, plants and viruses. They regulate key cellular processes by enhancing, degrading or silencing protein coding targets. Currently most of the data on miRNA is available from Drosophila . Given their important post-transcriptional role in several organisms, there is a need to understand the miRNA mediated processes in normal and abnormal conditions. Here we report four novel microRNAs ast - mir - 2502, ast - mir - 2559, ast - mir - 3868 and ast - mir - 9891 in Anopheles stephensi identified from a set of 3,052 transcriptome sequences, showing average minimum free energy of -31.8 kcal/mol of duplex formation with mRNA indicating their functional relevance. Phylogenetic study shows conservation of sequence signatures within the Class Insecta. Furthermore, 26 potential targets of these four miRNAs have been predicted that play an important role in the mosquito life-cycle. This work leads to novel leads and experimental possibilities for improved understanding of gene regulatory processes in mosquito.

A non-deterministic finite automaton is designed to observe the cholesterol metabolism with the states of acceptance and rejection. The acceptance state of the automaton depicts the normal level of metabolism and production of good cholesterol as an end product. The rejection state of this machine shows the inhibition of enzymatic activity in cholesterol synthesis and removal of free fatty acids. The deficiency in human cholesterol metabolism pathway results in abnormal accumulation of cholesterol in plasma, arterial tissues leading to diseases such as hypercholesterolemia, atherosclerosis respectively and formation of gallstones. The designed machine can be used to monitor the cholesterol metabolism at molecular level through regulation of enzymes involved in the biosynthesis and metabolism of cholesterol for the treatment of diseases incident due to the respective metabolic disorder. In addition, an algorithm for this machine has been developed to compare the programmed string with the given string. This study demonstrates the construction of a machine that is used for the development of molecular targeted therapy for the disorders in cholesterol metabolism.