Publications by authors named "Cissy Li"
Objective: Cigarette smoking can lead to a host of adverse health effects such as lung and heart disease. Increased lung cancer risk is associated with inhalation of carcinogens present in a puff of smoke. These carcinogenic compounds deposit in the lung at different sites and trigger a cascade of events leading to adverse outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRole of Calprotectin in Withholding Zinc and Copper from Candida albicans.
Infect Immun
February 2018
Article Synopsis
- The fungal pathogen acquires essential metals from the host, but the host uses a defense mechanism called nutritional immunity to withhold these micronutrients.
- The study highlights the role of calprotectin (CP), a protein that sequesters metals like zinc and copper, as a crucial player in this process by preventing the pathogen from accessing these metals.
- The research shows that CP induces different stress responses for zinc and copper during infection, with the copper response being more prolonged compared to the short-lived zinc response, indicating dynamic metal pools at the host-pathogen interaction.
Candida albicans adapts to host copper during infection by swapping metal cofactors for superoxide dismutase.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2015
Article Synopsis
- Copper is important for our bodies but can also be harmful, and when we get sick, our bodies can use copper to fight off germs.
- The fungus Candida albicans, which can cause infections, cleverly changes how it uses copper and manganese depending on how much copper is available.
- During an infection, C. albicans switches between different enzymes to stay protected and adjust to the changing levels of copper in the body, helping it survive while causing illness.
Candida albicans is a pathogenic yeast of important public health relevance. Virulence of C. albicans requires a copper and zinc containing superoxide dismutase (SOD1), but the biology of C.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPost-translational modification of Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase under anaerobic conditions.
Biochemistry
January 2012
In eukaryotic organisms, the largely cytosolic copper- and zinc-containing superoxide dismutase (Cu/Zn SOD) enzyme represents a key defense against reactive oxygen toxicity. Although much is known about the biology of this enzyme under aerobic conditions, less is understood regarding the effects of low oxygen levels on Cu/Zn SOD enzymes from diverse organisms. We show here that like bakers' yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), adaptation of the multicellular Caenorhabditis elegans to growth at low oxygen levels involves strong downregulation of its Cu/Zn SOD.
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