Improved candidate drug mining for Alzheimer's disease

Exploring the Role of Guanylate-Binding Protein-2 in Activated Microglia-Mediated Neuroinflammation and Neuronal Damage

Neuron damage by microglia, which act as macrophage cells in the brain, can result in various brain diseases. However, the function of pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory microglia in the neurons remains controversial. Guanylate-binding protein-2 (GBP2) is expressed and activated in the microglia in the early phase of the inflammatory response and plays an important role in controlling immune responses. In this study, we evaluated whether GBP2 initially reduces the immune response induced by microglia, and whether microglia induce pro-inflammatory functions in neurons via GBP2 expression. In lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated microglia, we assessed the expression of GBP2 and how it affects neurons via activated microglia. The biological functions of microglia due to the downregulation of the GBP2 gene were examined using short hairpin RNA (shRNA)-RNA-GBP2. Downregulated GBP2 affected the function of mitochondria in the microglia and showed reduced neuronal damage when compared to the control group in the co-culture system. Furthermore, this protein was observed to be highly expressed in the brains of dementia mice. Our results are the first to report that the downregulation of GBP2 in activated microglia has an anti-inflammatory function. This study suggests that the GBP2 gene can be used as a therapeutic target biomarker for inflammation-related neurodegenerative diseases.

Effective Natural PCR-RFLP Primer Design for SNP Genotyping Using Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization With Elite Strategy

SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) genotyping is the determination of genetic variations of SNPs between members of a species. In many laboratories, PCR-RFLP (polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism) is a usually used biotechnology for SNP genotyping, especially in small-scale basic research studies of complex genetic diseases. PCR-RFLP requires an available restriction enzyme at least for identify a target SNP and an effective primer pair conforms numerous constraints. However, the lots of restriction enzymes, tedious sequence and complicated constraints make the mining of available restriction enzymes and the design of effective primer pairs become a major challenge. In the study, we propose a novel and available CI (Computation Intelligence)-based method called TLBO (teaching-learning-based optimization) and introduce the elite strategy to design effective primer pairs. Three common melting temperature computations are available in the method. REHUNT (Restriction Enzymes HUNTing) is first combined with the method to mine available restriction enzymes. Robust in silico simulations for the GA (genetic algorithm), the PSO (particle swarm optimization), and the method for natural PCR-RFLP primer design in the SLC6A4 gene with two hundred and eighty-eight SNPs had been performed and compared. These methods had been implemented in JAVA and they are freely available at https://sites.google.com/site/yhcheng1981/tlbonpd-elite for users of academic and non-commercial interests.