We are witnessing major shifts in ecosystems due to intense anthropogenic pressures on the environment in recent decades, including rapid climate change, which is one of the strongest drivers of a global biological response. Raptors, which are at the top of the trophic web, are important indicators of ecosystem health. …
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) belongs to the ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases and plays an essential role in cell differentiation, migration, proliferation, and metabolism. Alterations in EGFR signalling were found in a number of cancers like lung, breast, colorectal cancer and gliomas, shown to be more aggressive and …
Rising demands for food, instigated by population growth and urbanization, are calling for advanced agricultural approaches to increase crop yields. However, the expansion of food production should not come with an unmanageable environmental cost. Plant science is therefore challenged to provide sustainable innovations for combating the detrimental effects of unfavourable …
Current and especially past industrial and mining activities, including underground and open pit mining, have often resulted in soil pollution that has become a global and alarming environmental problem. Among contaminants, heavy metals and metalloids are under environmental scrutiny due to their potential toxicity, persistence, and because they can be …
Cysteine cathepsins are endosomal proteases that are involved in lysosomal protein degradation. Additionally, they engage in specific biological processes, like bone degradation (CatK), antigen presentation (CatS) and pro-hormone processing (CatV and CatL). Their enhanced activity was described in numerous pathological states, like cancer and viral activation, which made them promising …
Air pollution is an inevitable problem that modern society has to face today, with particulate matter (PM) being the most dangerous part of it, threatening human health and the environment. Not all PM particles, however, are equally harmful, since the dangerous potential depends on their size and chemical composition, which …
Glioblastoma (GB) is the most common and aggressive primary tumour of the central nervous system. Despite maximal possible surgical resection of the tumours and aggressive treatment regimens with radiotherapy and chemotherapy, patient overall survival is less than 2 years, as patients eventually develop resistance to therapy, resulting in recurrent tumours. …
Plants are constantly exposed to various environmental stressors. Pathogen infections causing disease can affect economically important crops and impact global food production. To counter disease development and spread, it is imperative that we acquire a thorough knowledge of its pathogenesis, as well as of the mechanisms underlying plant immune response. …
Plant viruses are very important plant pathogens, causing economic losses by infecting cultivated plants, causing diseases, and consequently reducing crop quality and quantity. In recent years, the development of high throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies has dramatically broadened the possibilities for plant virus research and diagnostics, enabling the discovery of new …
Viruses, satellite viruses, viroids, virusoids, and satellite nucleic acids (herewith, referred to collectively or in part as ‘viruses’) comprise the virosphere and are perhaps the most diverse and abundant, yet still under-sampled, microbes on Earth. They are primarily regarded as pathogens or parasites of their eukaryotic or prokaryotic hosts. In …