DICER is a central regulator of microRNA maturation. However, little is known about mechanisms regulating its expression in development or disease. While profiling miRNA expression in differentiating melanocytes, two populations were observed: some upregul ...
Melanocyte stem cells in the bulge area of hair follicles are responsible for hair pigmentation, and defects in them cause hair graying. Here we describe the process of melanocyte stem cell entry into the quiescent state and show that niche-derived transfo ...
Angiogenesis is the process by which new blood vessels arise from existing ones by the budding out of endothelial cell capillaries from the luminal side of blood vessels. Blood vessel formation is essential for organ development during embryogenesis and is ...
Dopachrome tautomerase (Dct) is a critical enzyme in the melanogenesis pathway that isomerizes the intermediate dopachrome to 5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA) and influences the proportion of DHICA monomer incorporated into the 5,6-dihydroxyin ...
Summary We report on a systematic analysis of genotype-specific melanocyte UVR responses in transgenic mouse melanoma models along with tumour penetrance and comparative histopathology. pRb or p53 pathway mutations cooperated with Nras(Q61K) to transform m ...
Melanocytes respond to UVR not only by producing melanin, but also by proliferating. This is essentially a protective response. We have studied the melanocyte proliferative response after a single UVR exposure to neonatal mice. At 3 days post-UVR in wild-t ...
Atrial fibrillation is the most common clinical cardiac arrhythmia. It is often initiated by ectopic beats arising from the pulmonary veins and atrium, but the source and mechanism of these beats remains unclear. The melanin synthesis enzyme dopachrome tau ...
We have investigated the therapeutic potential of a prototypic melanoma vaccine based on recombinant adenovirus expressing human dopachrome tautomerase in the B16F10 murine melanoma model. We found that in the presence of a tumor, the magnitude of T-cell i ...
Natural killer (NK) cells show enhanced functional competence when they express inhibitory receptors specific for inherited major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) molecules. Current models imply that NK cell education requires an interaction of i ...
Epithelial sodium channels (ENaC) are members of the degenerin/ENaC superfamily of non-voltage-gated, highly amiloride-sensitive cation channels that are composed of three subunits (alpha-, beta- and gamma- ENaC). Since complete gene inactivation of the be ...
Ferritin plays a central role in iron metabolism by acting both as iron storage and detoxifying protein. We have generated a ferritin H allele with loxP sites and studied the conditional ferritin H deletion in adult mice. Ten days after Mx-Cre induced dele ...
The kidney is a key organ in the maintenance of ion and fluid homeostasis and specific transport systems localized along the nephron guarantee this function. Due to its large functional heterogeneity, experiments on the whole organ level cannot be easily p ...
Phosphate and tensin homologue deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) is a tumor suppressor gene inactivated in numerous sporadic cancers, including melanomas. To analyze Pten functions in melanocytes, we used the Cre-loxP system to delete Pten specifically in mu ...
Encounter of self-antigens in the periphery by mature T cells induces tolerance in the steady-state. Hence, it is not understood why the same peripheral antigens are also promiscuously expressed in the thymus to mediate central tolerance. Here, we analyzed ...
Purpose: Choroidal melanoma is the most common primary malignant ocular tumor in human adults. Relevant mouse models of human uveal melanoma still remain to be developed. We have studied the transgenic mouse strain, Tyrp-1-TAg, to try to gain insight into ...
Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 is known to play a paradoxical positive role in tumor angiogenesis, but its contribution to metastatic spread remains unclear. We studied the impact of PAI-1 deficiency in a transgenic mouse model of ocular tumors originat ...
Purpose: Discs large (dlg), scribble (scrib), and lethal giant larvae (lgl) are major suppressor genes in Drosophila melanogaster. They encode proteins that regulate cell polarity and cell proliferation in Drosophila and mammals. However, their basic oncog ...
