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“The present study was carried out to investigate the protective effect of vitamin C as antioxidant to reduce hepatotoxicity and spleen toxicity induced by lead. Lead acetate administered at 20 mg/kg intake caused severe alterations in liver and spleen manifested by hepatocytes degeneration and leucocytes infiltration and fibrosis in liver, ill-defined architecture and large macrophages in the spleen. Vitamin C administered at 500 mg/kg of vitamin C one hour prior to lead reduced hepatotoxicity but did not affect liver

fibrosis. Moreover, Vitamin C reduced the toxicity in spleen characterized by well-defined spleen architecture.”
“Coenzyme A (CoA) is an ubiquitous and essential cofactor, synthesized see more from the precursor pantothenate. Vitamin biosynthetic pathways are normally tightly regulated, including the pathway from pantothenate to CoA. However, no regulation of pantothenate biosynthesis has been identified. C59 We have recently described an additional component in the pantothenate biosynthetic pathway, PanZ, which promotes the activation

of the zymogen, PanD, to form aspartate a-decarboxylase (ADC) in a CoA-dependent manner. Here we report the structure of PanZ in complex with PanD, which reveals the structural basis for the CoA dependence of this interaction and activation. In addition, we show that PanZ acts as a CoA-dependent inhibitor of ADC catalysis. This inhibitory effect can effectively regulate the biosynthetic pathway to pantothenate, and thereby also regulate CoA biosynthesis. This represents a previously unobserved mode of metabolic regulation whereby a cofactor-utilizing protein negatively regulates the biosynthesis of the same cofactor.”
“Environmental chemicals can disrupt endocrine signaling and adversely impact sexual differentiation in wildlife. Bisphenol A (BPA) is an estrogenic chemical commonly found in selleck inhibitor a variety of habitats. In this study, we used painted turtles (Chrysemys picta), which have temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), as an animal model for ontogenetic endocrine disruption by BPA. We hypothesized

that BPA would override TSD and disrupt sexual development. We incubated farm-raised turtle eggs at the male-producing temperature (26 degrees C), randomly assigned individuals to treatment groups: control, vehicle control, 17 beta-estradiol (E2, 20 ng/g-egg) or 0.01, 1.0, 100 mu g BPA/g-egg and harvested tissues at hatch. Typical female gonads were present in 89% of the E2-treated “males”, but in none of the control males (n = 35). Gonads of BPA-exposed turtles had varying amounts of ovarian-like cortical (OLC) tissue and disorganized testicular tubules in the medulla. Although the percentage of males with OLCs increased with BPA dose (SPA-low = 30%, BPA-medium = 33%, BPA-high = 39%), this difference was not significant (p = 0.85).