Prioritizing the candidate genes related to cervical cancer using the moment of inertia tensor.

It is well known that cervical cancer poses the fourth most malignancy threat to women worldwide among all cancer types. There is a tremendous improvement in realizing the underlying molecular associations in cervical cancer. Several studies reported pieces of evidence for the involvement of various genes in the disease progression. However, with the ever-evolving bioinformatics tools, there has been an upsurge in predicting numerous genes responsible for cervical cancer progression and making it highly complex to target the genes for further evaluation. In this article, we prioritized the candidate genes based on the sequence similarity analysis with known cancer genes. For this purpose, we used the concept of the moment of inertia tensor, which reveals the similarities between the protein sequences more efficiently. Tensor for moment of inertia explores the similarity of the protein sequences based on the physicochemical properties of amino acids. From our analysis, we obtained 14 candidate cervical cancer genes, which are highly similar to known cervical cancer genes. Further, we analyzed the GO terms and prioritized these genes based on the number of hits with biological process, molecular functions, and their involvement in KEGG pathways. We also discussed the evidence-based involvement of the prioritized genes in other cancers and listed the available drugs for those genes.

Aging renders desynchronization between clock and immune genes in male Wistar rat kidney: chronobiotic role of curcumin.

Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) contains the central clock that orchestrate circadian rhythms in physiology and behavior in mammals. Tightly interlocked transcriptional and translational feedback loops (TTFLs) comprising of various clock genes such as Clock, Bmal1, Periods, Cryptochromes etc. in the SCN, send the timing signals to peripheral clocks that governs local metabolism with similar TTFLs. Peripheral clocks in kidney regulates several circadian rhythms like blood pressure, immunity etc. However, aging leads to circadian and inflammatory disorders in kidney. Though there are increasing evidences on age associated perturbations, studies elucidating the rhythmic expression of clock and immune genes across aging in kidney are obscure. We therefore studied changes in daily rhythms of clock and immune genes in kidney. In this study we measured mRNA expression of clock genes rBmal1, rPer1, rPer2, rCry1, rCry2, rRev-erbα, rRorα, and inflammatory genes rNfκb1, rTnfα, rIl6, rTlr4 and rTlr9 in 3, 12 and 24 months male Wistar rat kidney using qRT-PCR. From our study, we did not observe significant changes in clock genes expression except rRorα, but immune genes showed significant phase alterations as well as increase in mean 24 h levels. Pearson correlation analysis of data showed desynchronization between immune and clock genes expression. We further studied the effect of administration of curcumin which has anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant etc. properties, and evaluated its chronobiotic properties. We here report differential effects of curcumin administration on daily rhythms of clock and immune genes expression.