Transcriptome profiling of flax plants exposed to a low-frequency alternating electromagnetic field.

All living organisms on Earth evolved in the presence of an electromagnetic field (EMF), adapted to the environment of EMF, and even learned to utilize it for their purposes. However, during the last century, the Earth's core lost its exclusivity, and many EMF sources appeared due to the development of electricity and electronics. Previous research suggested that the EMF led to changes in intercellular free radical homeostasis and further altered the expression of genes involved in plant response to environmental stresses, inorganic ion transport, and cell wall constituent biosynthesis. Later, CTCT sequence motifs in gene promoters were proposed to be responsible for the response to EMF. How these motifs or different mechanisms are involved in the plant reaction to external EMF remains unknown. Moreover, as many genes activated under EMF treatment do not have the CTCT repeats in their promoters, we aimed to determine the transcription profile of a plant exposed to an EMF and identify the genes that are directly involved in response to the treatment to find the common denominator of the observed changes in the plant transcriptome.

The alternating 50 Hz magnetic field depending on the hydrophobicity of the strain affects the viability, filamentation and sensitivity to drugs of Candida albicans.

In recent decades, Candida albicans have been the main etiological agent of life-threatening invasive infections, characterized by various mechanisms of resistance to commonly used antifungals. One of the strategies to fight Candida infections may be the use of an electromagnetic field. In this study, we examined the influence of the alternating magnetic field of 50 Hz on the cells of C. albicans. We checked the impact of the alternating magnetic field of 50 Hz on the viability, filamentation and sensitivity to fluconazole and amphotericin B of two, differing in hydrophobicity, strains of C. albicans, CAF2-1 and CAF 4-2. Our results indicate that using the alternating magnetic field of 50 Hz reduces the growth of C. albicans. Interestingly, it presents a stronger effect on the hydrophobic strain CAF4-2 than on the hydrophilic CAF2-1. The applied electromagnetic field also affects the permeabilization of the cell membrane. However, it does not inhibit the transformation from yeast to hyphal forms. AMF is more effective in combination with fluconazole rather than amphotericin B. Our findings confirm the hypothesis that the application of the alternating magnetic field of 50 Hz in antifungal therapy may arise as a new option to support the treatment of Candida infections.

Influence of temperature rise by 2.5°C on the increase of apoptosis of HL-60 cells treated with busulfan.

BACKGROUND: Hyperthermia is one of the new and still poorly known methods used in cancer treatment. It consists of raising the patient's body temperature for therapeutic purposes. The article presents the results of in vitro studies describing the effect of an elevated temperature of 39.5°C, the busulfan cytostatic and their combination on the level of apoptosis of human leukemia HL-60 cells. OBJECTIVES: During the experiments, the influence of a 2.5°C temperature increase on the behavior of the population of 2 groups of HL-60 cells, with busulfan cytostatic and without the cytostatic, was investigated. The control group consisted of 2 groups of HL-60 cells incubated at 37.0°C with the cytostatic and without the cytostatic. Two questions were asked: 1. Is low-temperature hyperthermia likely to have an effect on the effectiveness of busulfan cytostatic? 2. Does the increase in temperature by 2.5°C have an effect on the level of apoptosis in the unsaturated HL-60 cell line? MATERIAL AND METHODS: Human promyelocytic leukemia cell line HL-60 was used in the experiments to examine the influence of temperature on apoptosis HL-60 in 2 separated incubators set to 37.0°C and 39.5°C for 3 h. Apoptosis was assessed with flow cytometry using Annexin V. RESULTS: An increase in mortality of HL-60 cells was found in the case of simultaneous exposure to elevated temperature and busulfan in comparison to the group of cells treated with the cytostatic alone. There was no observed effect of an elevated temperature of 39.5°C alone on the level of HL-60 cell apoptosis. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of the study results indicates that low-temperature hyperthermia may be used to increase the effectiveness of busulfan treatment. No effect of an elevated temperature of 39.5°C on the level of apoptosis in HL-60 cells that were not treated with busulfan was observed. There is a need to test the efficacy of other cytostatic agents at elevated temperatures.

The influence of N and S poles of static magnetic field (SMF) on Candida albicans hyphal formation and antifungal activity of amphotericin B.

Due to the increasing number of Candida albicans' infections and the resistance of this pathogenic fungus to drugs, new therapeutic strategies are sought. One of such strategies may be the use of static magnetic field (SMF). C. albicans cultures were subjected to static magnetic field of the induction 0.5 T in the presence of fluconazole and amphotericin B. We identified a reduction of C. albicans hyphal length. Also, a statistically significant additional effect on the viability of C. albicans was revealed when SMF was combined with the antimycotic drug amphotericin B. The synergistic effect of this antimycotic and SMF may be due to the fact that amphotericin B binds to ergosterol in plasma membrane and SMF similarly to MF could influence domain orientation in plasma membrane (PM).

Electromagnetic Field Seems to Not Influence Transcription via CTCT Motif in Three Plant Promoters.

It was proposed that magnetic fields (MFs) can influence gene transcription via CTCT motif located in human HSP70 promoter. To check the universality of this mechanism, we estimated the potential role of this motif on plant gene transcription in response to MFs using both bioinformatics and experimental studies. We searched potential promoter sequences (1000 bp upstream) in the potato Solanum tuberosum and thale cress Arabidopsis thaliana genomes for the CTCT sequence. The motif was found, on average, 3.6 and 4.3 times per promoter (148,487 and 134,361 motifs in total) in these two species, respectively; however, the CTCT sequences were not randomly distributed in the promoter regions but were preferentially located near the transcription initiation site and were closely packed. The closer these CTCT sequences to the transcription initiation site, the smaller distance between them in both plants. One can assume that genes with many CTCT motifs in their promoter regions can be potentially regulated by MFs. To check this assumption, we tested the influence of MFs on gene expression in a transgenic potato with three promoters (16R, 20R, and 5UGT) containing from 3 to 12 CTCT sequences and starting expression of ß-glucuronidase as a reported gene. The potatoes were exposed to a 50 Hz 60-70 A/m MF for 30 min and the reporter gene activity was measured for up to 24 h. Although other factors induced the reporter gene activity, the MF did not. It implies the CTCT motif does not mediate in response to MF in the tested plant promoters.