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The paper deals with the presence of iron-based granules in body parts of bumblebees. Two groups of bumblebees were collected from their natural habitat, industrial landscape, and from a breeding station. Detection of the magnetic particles was performed by a vibratory magnetometer and their morphology and elemental composition was analysed by scanning electron microscopy with EDX microanalysis. By...
The phytohormone auxin is an essential mediator in many aspects of plant development. Its dynamic and differential distribution within the plant is regulated by a variety of environmental cues including heavy metal stimuli. In the present study, we first evaluated the toxic effects of seven heavy metals including Pb2+, Cd2+, Hg2+, Ni2+. Zn2+, Co2+ and Cu2+ in their excess on the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana...
The hypoxic preconditioning of mammalian cells has been shown to have beneficial effects against hypoxic injuries. However, very little information is available on the comparative analysis of immunological responses to hypoxic and hypoxia mimetic exposure. Therefore, in the present study, mouse peritoneal macrophages and splenocytes were subjected to hypoxia exposure (0.5 % O2) and hypoxia mimetic...
The histone-like protein (HPhA) is highly homologous to the eukaryotic histones and has the ability to bind to the DNA molecules. In this study, we tested divalent metal ions Mg2+, Ca2+, Zn2+, Pb2+ for their effect on the recombinant HPhA (rHPhA)-DNA binding. We found that only Pb2+ was able to reduce the formation of rHPhA-DNA complex using gel mobility shift assays. Equilibrium dialysis showed that...
Environmental exposure of Cr(VI) and Ni(II) due to rapid industrialization causes adverse effects in living tissues. Small quantities of these ions also find their way into tissues when metal alloys are used as implants. Even though considerable research has been done on the effects due to their exposure in animal cells, there are only very few reports on how they can affect stem cells which have...
Chronic copper toxicity has been long known to cause hepatotoxicity and liver cirrhosis as observed in Wilson’s disease; however, substantial evidence accrued over the time have shown considerable increase in animal studies demonstrating Alzheimer’s disease like pathology due to chronic copper-intoxication under certain conditions. This review integrates the contemporary mammalian studies in which...
Zn is an essential element for plants yet some soils are Zn-deficient and/or have low Zn-bioavailability. This paper addresses the feasibility of using ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) as soil amendments to improve Zn levels in the plant. The effects of soil properties on phytotoxicity and Zn bioavailability from the NPs were studied by using an acidic and a calcareous alkaline soil. In the acid soil, the...
Selenium (Se) is an essential dietary trace element, which acts as an antioxidant. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of intracellular proteins whose synthesis is greatly increased upon exposure of cells to environmental stressors including oxidative metabolites, heavy metals, amino acid analogues and so on. However, little is known about the role of HSPs in oxidative stress damage induced by...
Aluminium (Al), a ubiquitous element in nature is associated with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, zinc (Zn) is an essential trace element that regulates large number of physiological processes in the human body. The present study was conducted to explore the role of zinc, if any, in regulating apoptotic machinery during Al induced neurodegeneration in rat. Male sprague dawley...
Light-intensity and redox-state induced thylakoid proteins phosphorylation involved in structural changes and in regulation of protein turnover. The presence of heavy metal ions triggers a wide range of cellular responses including changes in plant growth and photosynthesis. Plants have evolved a number of mechanisms to protect photosynthetic apparatus. We have characterized the effect of lead on...
Copper (Cu) ion is essential for the biological systems, however, high level of CuCl2 exposure causes detrimental effects, which leads to cell apoptosis. Nitric oxide (NO) is an efficient cell signal messenger, which plays an important role in cell apoptosis. However, the potential mechanism of an early phase Cu-induced acute cytotoxicity through the nitric oxide synthase (NOS) signaling pathway and...
Esophageal cancer is one of the least studied cancers and is found to be prominent in black South African males. It is mainly diagnosed in the late stages, and patients tend to have a low 5-year survival rate of only 10 %. Silver is generally used as an antimicrobial agent, with limited reports on anticancer studies. In this study, dimeric silver(I) thiocyanate complexes were used containing a variation...
Dietary boron intake is associated with reduced prostate and lung cancer risk and increased bone mass. Boron is absorbed and circulated as boric acid (BA) and at physiological concentrations is a reversible competitive inhibitor of cyclic ADP ribose, the endogenous agonist of the ryanodine receptor calcium (Ca+2) channel, and lowers endoplasmic reticulum (ER) [Ca2+]. Low ER [Ca2+] has been reported...
Manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), and zinc (Zn) are essential nutrients which aid in the proper functioning of cells, but high concentrations of these metals can be toxic to various organs. Little is known about the endogenous concentrations of these metals in the cochlea, the auditory portion of the inner ear which is extremely small and difficult to access. To fill this gap, a trace quantitative...
The effects of dissolved elements from metal dental restorations are a major concern in lesions of the oral mucosa, and the evaluation of accumulated metal elements, especially their distribution and chemical state, is essential for determining the precise effects of trace metals. In this study, X-ray fluorescence with synchrotron radiation (SR-XRF) and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) were...
Despite the evidence suggesting a role for Helicobacter pylori in the induction of systemic iron deficiency anaemia, little is known about the possibility of infection-associated changes in cellular iron homeostasis at the gastric epithelium. In this study we compared four different techniques for measuring iron in AGS cells, a gastric epithelial cell line that is widely used to model to H. pylori...
Full length recombinant iron regulatory protein, Fur, has been isolated and characterized from the algal-associated marine bacterium Marinobacter algicola DG893. Under nondenaturing conditions the Fur protein behaves on size exclusion chromatography as a dimer while it is monomeric under SDS PAGE conditions. ICP-MS and fluorescence quenching experiments show that Mb-Fur binds a single metal ion (Zn,...
Selenoprotein W (SelW) is mainly understood in terms of its antioxidant effects in the cellular defense system. Inflammation is an important indicator of animal tissue injury, and the inflammatory cells may trigger a sophisticated and well-orchestrated inflammatory cascade, resulting in exaggerated oxidative stress. To investigate the role of SelW in inflammatory injury in chicken immune tissues and...
Intravenous iron preparations, like iron sucrose (IS) and ferric carboxymaltose (FCM) differ in their physicochemical stability. Thus differences in storage and utilization can be expected and were investigated in a non-clinical study in liver parenchyma HepG2-cells and THP-1 macrophages as models for toxicological and pharmacological target cells. HepG2-cells incorporated significant amounts of IS,...
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