Showing posts with label Combretastatin A-4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Combretastatin A-4. Show all posts

Sunday, May 25, 2014

They Didn't Think I Could Become A Combretastatin A-4DBeQ Expert...Now I Am!

Handle taken care of tumors expressed only minimal amounts of DR4 whilst a demonstrable increase in its expression was observed in all taken care of RGFP966 specimens: a larger level was noticed in doxorubicin taken care of samples than in TRAIL taken care of samples,and was most pronounced in combination therapy group. Similarly only low DR5 expression was noticed in control tumors. Nonetheless,in contrast to DR4 expression only a minimal increase in DR5 expression was observed in TRAIL taken care of tumors as well as a reasonable increase was noticed soon after doxorubicin therapy alone whereas combination therapy resulted in a marked increase in expression intensity and distribution of this TRAIL receptor. It really is doable that increased TRAIL receptor expression,specifically DR5,is a minimum of partially responsible for that enhanced anti tumorigenic effect of mixed TRAIL/ doxorubicin.

TRAIL/doxorubicin combination inhibits the community and metastatic growth of human fibrosarcoma in vivo and prolongs survival Up coming,we evaluated RGFP966 the effect of mixed TRAIL/doxorubicin on another human STS histological subtype;HT1080 xenografts rising in SCID mice. As depicted in Fig 3A,therapy with doxorubicin or TRAIL alone did not drastically impact HT1080 growth in comparison to control taken care of mice. Nonetheless,mixed therapy resulted in sizeable tumor growth inhibition in comparison to another 3 experimental arms. Additionally,average tumor weights at termination of your review have been very similar in control,doxorubicin,and TRAIL alone taken care of mice whereas combination therapy drastically diminished tumor fat in comparison to all other therapeutic regimens.

Similar to over,Ki 67 staining and TUNEL assay scoring uncovered that mixed doxorubicin/TRAIL combination resulted in drastically decreased tumor cell proliferation and increased apoptosis. The baseline DR4 and DR5 expression amounts in control HT1080 tumors have been larger than DBeQ those of SKLMS1 tumors. An increase in DR4 expression was observed in all therapy cohorts most pronounced in doxorubicin and TRAIL/doxorubicin therapy groups. Similarly,a rise in DR5 was noticed in doxorubicin taken care of tumors and also to the highest extent in combination taken care of samples. This pattern of TRAIL receptors expression was very similar in the two of your STS histological subtype animal models evaluated. Metastases are the key induce of STS distinct mortality.

To evaluate no matter if combining doxorubicin/TRAIL resulted in pulmonary metastastic outgrowth inhibition,we utilized an experimental fibrosarcoma lung metastasis model. No significant difference in luciferase readout Erythropoietin was observed among doxorubicin or TRAIL alone taken care of mice in comparison to controls. In contrast,mixed TRAIL/doxorubicin resulted in decreased luciferase readout with fewer and smaller sized lung metastases observed to the lung surface. Macroscopic findings have been also confirmed on H+E staining,demonstrating big lung tumor deposits in control,doxorubicin,and TRAIL groups and smaller sized,microscopic lesions inside the combination group. Lung weights have been drastically reduce in mixed vs. control,doxorubicin or TRAIL therapy groups Lastly,we evaluated the effect of mixed TRAIL/doxorubicin to the survival of mice harboring lung metastases.

An experiment as per over was performed and mice have been followed for survival. The median survival time of control,doxorubicin,and TRAIL taken care of mice was 20,21,and 20 days,respectively,in comparison to 34d for mice taken care of with TRAIL and doxorubicin. A KM plot is proven DBeQ in Fig 4C,demonstrating a statistically sizeable prolongation in general survival of mice taken care of with mixed TRAIL/doxorubicin. TRAIL/doxorubicin combination elicits anti angiogenic effects in STS STS are really vascular and angiogenic,perhaps accounting for his or her capability to grow to big dimension and avidly metastasize. Therefore,we evaluated if your mixed therapeutic strategy affected STS microvessel density. Treatment with doxorubicin or TRAIL alone resulted in a statistically non sizeable reduction inside the quantity of CD31 good vessels in comparison to controls.

In contrast,combination therapy resulted in a marked reduction in CD 31 good vessels. Interestingly,no TUNEL staining was recognized in CD 31 good cells on Immunofluorescence double staining in any considered one of the therapy cohorts. RGFP966 These results suggest that the observed lessen in blood vessel variety in response to mixed therapy is just not secondary to endothelial cell apoptosis and potentially represents de novo inhibition of angiogenesis. Tumor related angiogenesis is actually a complicated procedure involving a lot of professional and anti angiogenic factors. Up coming,we sought to evaluate the effect of TRAIL/doxorubicin combination to the expression of angiogenic factors in vivo. RNA extracted from control and combination taken care of tumors was subjected to an angiogenesis RT2 Profiler RT PCR array.

This DBeQ array only recognizes human RNA;therefore,results signify gene expression alterations in STS cells and not inside the murine originating tumor related stroma. Interestingly,expression alterations in only two genes of those included to the array have been observed to occur reproducibly in the two STS models;a marked increase inside the level of your anti angiogenic component CXCL10 as well as a sizeable lessen inside the expression of your angiogenic component IL 8 was observed inside the TRAIL/doxorubicin taken care of tumors in comparison to control taken care of tumors. qRTPCR was made use of to evaluate mRNA expression of CXCL10 and IL 8 in an independent tumor sample cohort of control,TRAIL,doxorubicin and mixed TRAIL/doxorubicin SKLMS1 and HT1080 taken care of xenografts.

A substantial increase in CXCL10 mRNA expression was observed in combination taken care of tumors as in comparison to controls;no sizeable change was noted in TRAIL or doxorubicin alone taken care of tumors. Similarly,a statistically sizeable lessen in IL 8 mRNA expression was observed in combination therapy tumors,but not in tumors RGFP966 taken care of with both compound alone. Treatment induced effects on CXCL10 and IL 8 protein have been additional confirmed through IHC. The functional affect of decreased in IL8,considered one of one of the most crucial chemotactic factors for neutrophils,was additional reflected by a statistically sizeable lessen inside the quantity of tumor infiltrating neutrophils recognized in combination taken care of samples.

Similarly,a rise in macrophage infiltration was observed in TRAIL/doxorubicin DBeQ taken care of specimens potentially reflecting the enhanced action of CXCL10 in these tumors and the recruitment of myeloid derived cells with anti tumorigenic capacities. Previously published information suggested a TRAIL induced reduction in VEGF A expression as being a possible mechanism for TRAIL anti angiogenic effects in glioblastoma. No effect of TRAIL/doxorubicin on VEGF A level in STS specimens was demonstrated inside the gene expression arrays,qRTPCR,and IHC. Lastly,we evaluated no matter if the in vivo effect of doxorubicin/TRAIL on CXCL10 and IL 8 expression could possibly be recapitulated in culture. SKLMS1 and HT1080 cells have been taken care of with doxorubicin,TRAIL,or their combination with doxorubicin administered before TRAIL as described;RNA was extracted and conditioned media collected.

As proven in Fig 6A,mixed therapy resulted in a sizeable increase in CXCL10 mRNA expression as well as a reduction in IL 8 mRNA expression in comparison to controls or both drug alone. Similarly,ELISA confirmed the respective alterations in protein expression amounts of those cytokines. Whilst the research over tend not to preclude doable effects of TRAIL/ doxorubicin on other angiogenesis connected factors,a doable function for CXCL10 induction and IL8 lessen inside the anti angiogenic effects resulting from this therapeutic routine is suggested in STS. Discussion A possible function for TRAIL as being a novel anti cancer agent has emerged as a consequence of its potent and potentially tumor selective professional apoptotic effects. A number of Phase I clinical trials evaluated the results of TRAIL agonist monoclonal antibodies in patients with innovative solid cancers,which include sarcoma.

Whilst no objective responses have been recorded,prolonged disease stabilization was documented in a number of sarcoma patients. One example is,Plummer et al not too long ago reported a review making use of lexatumumab by which twelve sarcoma patients participated. Their results recognized 3 sarcoma patients,all with documented progressive disease on conventional chemotherapy,in whom lexatumumab resulted in prolonged disease stabilization and minimal sideeffects. Collectively,these clinical research suggest that TRAIL agonist effects are certainly not distinct sarcoma histological subtype selective. Nonetheless,their apparent constrained clinical affect when made use of as single anti sarcoma agents calls for that identification of more efficient combinatorial therapeutic approaches.

Scientific studies here show that the combination of doxorubicin and TRAIL,administered within this sequential order,elicits potent community and metastatic growth inhibitory effects in xenograft models of human STS,whereas no sizeable effect was observed with both agent alone. These information additional broaden previously published findings suggesting that chemotherapy may possibly boost TRAIL mediated apoptosis in sarcoma cells in vitro. Importantly,our findings display that the doxorubicin/TRAIL combination effect is independent of p53 mutation status: sizeable anti tumor effects have been observed in STS harboring both wild type or mutated p53. This observation is of possible clinical relevance in STS because p53 dysregulation is extremely typical,and STS harboring p53 mutations are considered for being more resistant to latest therapeutic strategies.

The molecular mechanisms leading to mixed doxorubicin and TRAIL professional apoptotic synergistic effects are certainly not very well defined. Whilst the sensitivity of cells to TRAIL isn't going to appear for being a straightforward perform of TRAIL death receptor expression level,the augmentation of TRAIL induced apoptosis by chemotherapeutic medication has been suggested for being a minimum of partly the consequence of drug induced up regulation of death receptors.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Several Responds And Inquires To DBeQCombretastatin A-4

Immediately after finding that Akt IV inhibition of VSV replication didn't appear to be dependent around the inhi bition of Akt kinase action,we chose to investigate whether the antiviral results of Akt IV extended to other viruses or whether they had been PP1 restricted to rhabdoviruses. We examined the results of Akt IV addition around the replication of two other viruses,the paramyxovirus RSV along with the poxvirus VACV. Ob taining effects just like individuals for VSV,we found that the Akt inhibitors Akt V and Akt VIII had tiny impact around the expres sion of both RSV or VACV proteins but that Akt IV significantly inhibited gene expression by the two viruses,illustrating that the compound has broad antiviral ac tion. We did find that remedy of cells with LY294002 de creased the expression of VACV late protein A27L,consistent with other reviews that this compound can inhibit VACV professional tein expression.

DISCUSSION The results that we current in this review handle the situation of whether the NSS RNA virus VSV involves PI3k/Akt action for efficient replication. Our PP1 effects demonstrate that neither the inhibition of PI3k action nor the inhibition of Akt action decreases VSV gene expression or virus progeny production. This observation suggests that the action of this pathway plays a minimal purpose in VSV replication. This finding is consistent that has a recent report exhibiting that in invertebrates,VSV infec tion effects inside the inhibition of your PI3k/Akt signaling pathway. Remarkably,we also found contrasting actions whenever we ex amined how Akt inhibitors impacted virus replication.

Deal with ment of cells with Akt inhibitors Akt V and Akt VIII didn't alter VSV replication but did block the kinase activating phophorylation occasions at Thr308 and Ser473. In contrast,Akt inhibitor Akt IV promoted Akt phosphorylation at residues Thr308 and Ser473 and showed strong inhibition of virus replication,that's Combretastatin A-4 in preserving with all the data in an earlier report exhibiting that this compound blocks RNA virus replica tion. These findings suggest that the action by which Akt IV inhibits virus replication is not a result of its focusing on Akt kinase action. Our data suggest that a revision of your proposed mechanism of action for Akt IV is in order. Depending on effects of drug treatment options at ten M,former reviews postulated that Akt IV was acting to block phosphorylation and,thereby,activation of Akt.

We find that at reduced concentrations,Akt IV in creases the phosphorylation of Akt in several cell types. This raise in phosphorylation is PI3k dependent. In terestingly,our in vitro kinase assay data suggest that Akt IV may possibly straight activate PDK1,which phosphorylates Akt on Thr308. This possible Protein biosynthesis raise in PDK1 action may also account for your distinction inside the ranges of Akt phosphorylation at residues Thr308 and Ser473 found in cells taken care of with Akt IV. Our observation that the Akt IV inhibitor increases the lev els of phospho Akt suggests that the ascribed actions of this compound could possibly be peripheral towards the direct inhibition of Akt action. The structure of your compound is consistent with all the thought that Akt IV may possibly act as an ATP analog to block the active site of the kinase,but our screening assays didn't identify Akt or any other kinase amid the 80 plus kinases examined like a target.

This result is consistent with findings Combretastatin A-4 described in other reviews suggesting that Akt IV doesn't alter the in vitro action of Akt. The addition of Akt IV to cells did lower the phos phorylation of downstream Akt substrates such as 4E BP1. The dephosphorylation of 4E BP1 is consistent with Akt IVs focusing on signaling downstream of Akt kinase action,maybe at the level of mTOR. This observation of increased phosphorylation of Akt fol lowing drug remedy is not unique to Akt IV,as the stimu lation of Akt phosphorylation is witnessed previously in response to various kinase inhibitors,such as rapamycin along with the a short while ago characterized Akt inhibitor Abbot compound A 443654.

The main difference inside the actions of Akt IV along with a 443654 are highlighted by the effects of our in vitro kinase profiling assays;these display that Akt IV doesn't straight in hibit Akt kinase action in vitro,although A 443654 in PP1 an identical display does. Akt IV along with a 443654 the two lead to a rise in Akt phosphorylation and lead to the dephos phorylation of downstream effectors,but their mecha nisms of action need to be distinct,as Akt IV doesn't inhibit Akt in vitro. This pattern argues that Akt IV includes a unique mech anism of action,maybe blocking the recruitment of the cur rently unidentified cofactor required for downstream signaling of Akt or inhibiting some other host cell approach that may be essen tial for viral replication. Depicted in Fig.

6 is often a simplified diagram Combretastatin A-4 of your PI3k/Akt signaling pathway highlighting the factors at which inhibitors utilized in these experiments would exert their results and inhibit Akt phosphorylation. The PI3k inhibitors LY294002 and wortmannin the two inhibit the synthesis of PIP3,that's required for PDK1 activation of Akt. The Akt inhibitors Akt V and Akt VIII straight stop phosphorylation and as a result acti vation of Akt. Since Akt IV doesn't stop phosphorylation on Akts activation internet sites or straight block kinase action in vitro,we propose that Akt IV acts downstream of Akt activation and quite possibly at the level of substrate recognition. We also propose that the antiviral action related with this particular compound is independent of your PI3k/Akt signaling pathway and occurs by a mechanism yet to be determined.

Our effects display that Akt inhibitor Akt IV is the only Akt inhibitor we examined that blocked early replication occasions in VSV,RSV,and VACV infection. PP1 The easiest explanation of this action is often a non Akt pathway target. The compound was isolated in a higher throughput display in vivo that was not de signed to uncover compounds that specifically target Akt. Akt IV,just like the Akt inhibitor A 443654,might have several targets within the AGC kinase household,even though data from our kinase assay display displays no clear candidates. Alterna tively,Akt IV may possibly target other facets of normal cellular func tion. This implication could possibly be important for your understanding of findings from studies that have utilized this compound like a specific Akt inhibitor,particularly individuals which have found Akt IV to be significantly less efficient than other Akt inhibitors such as Akt V.

Speculatively,the mechanism of antiviral action might be attributed to a block of viral entry or maybe to inhibition both of viral RNA transcription or even the translation of viral mRNAs. Additional studies to Combretastatin A-4 figure out the level of viral RNAs inside the cell can help figure out which stage inside the viral replication cycle is affected. Notably,all 3 of your viruses examined right here replicate inside the cytoplasm. Thus,Akt IV may possibly probably block the function of the host kinase inside the cytoplasm,leading to an impact just like one of the host antiviral responses. Due to the fact our effects and individuals of other researchers have established that this compound properly inhibits the replica tion of several unfavorable strand RNA viruses,it might be of significant curiosity to find out any further targets of this compound.

It may be achievable to identify the antiviral target of Akt IV in vitro simply just by raising the amount of kinase targets inside the kinase profiling assay or in vivo by using an analytical strategy that combines a drug affinity pull down assay with mass spectrometry to identify proteins related with Akt IV as new targets. The two approaches are already utilized successfully in studies to assess off target results of various clinical medication that have broad spectrum antikinase pursuits. In conclusion,we demonstrate that the PI3k/Akt pathway doesn't appear to be required for VSV replication. This finding supports the conclusions of other groups that have determined that this pathway has minimal influence on unfavorable strand RNA virus replication.

Our studies do display that the inhibitor Akt IV displays a mechanism of action that may be distinctive from what is described previously and suggest that this compound deserves even further review like a broad spectrum antiviral agent. Our effects display that the an tiviral action of this drug is potent and sustained and blocks an early stage of viral replication. These effects suggest the pos sibility that this compound may possibly display a broader spectrum of antiviral action than is described to date. Thus,based upon our data,we propose that the Akt inhibitor Akt IV has two distinct actions,the first becoming the inhi bition of Akt by a unique mechanism along with the 2nd becoming the focusing on of an additional,presently unknown kinase that may be neces sary for VSV to establish a productive replication cycle.

Fifteen many years in the past,HIV protease inhibitors had been introduced into the clinic like a 2nd class of antiretrovirals,just after nucleosides,and launched the era of mixture anti retroviral therapy that brought along a dramatic reduc tion of your morbidity and mortality amid HIV contaminated pa tients. PIs evolved to be a significant class of agents which might be becoming extensively used in mixture with other antiretrovirals in the two remedy naïve and experienced pa tients. To the basis of recent revisions of HIV remedy tips,one of various ritonavir boosted PIs is recom mended for use like a third agent of decision in mixture with tenofovir and emtricitabine for first line Artwork. The decision of PIs above other antiretroviral agents is principally driven by their clinical potency along with a higher genetic barrier for resistance growth.

Moreover,the clinical use of a lot more a short while ago created PIs with enhanced resistance profiles,e. g. ,darunavir,in mixture with new antiretrovirals may possibly signify a promising nucleoside sparing solution for hugely remedy experienced patients. While a total of nine PIs is presently out there for your remedy of HIV infection,only a handful of are extensively utilized. Usually,the lengthy term clinical benefit of PIs across all patient populations can be constrained by different components,including lengthy term security and tolerability,resistance,and drug drug interactions.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

DBeQCombretastatin A-4 -- Recommendations On How Along with Especially Why Users Can Reap Benefits Using This

n more genotypes pres ent in the data than female lines, This is the only variant region for PP1 P. zelicaon with more than 10 variants. B Parameter Because ESTs were sequenced from a number of geno types and because assembly coverage varies among con tigs, standard measures of nucleotide diversity such as θ can not PP1 be calculated. Instead, we consider a relative measure of nucleotide diversity Bt developed by Novaes et al, defined for contigs with average coverage at least 2×. However, for all that follows, we compute B statis tics only for those contigs with at least 6× average cover age to avoid biases caused by contigs that represent diverse sequences but are expressed at low levels. For contigs that also have a B.
mori best hit, we can compute RGFP966 Bn, a diversity estimate for non synony mous sites, and Bs, a diversity estimate for synonymous sites, Bt, Bn, and Bs are formally defined as follows. In the above, St is the number RNA polymerase of SNPs in the contig, Sn is the number of non synonymous SNPs in BLAST annotated putative coding regions, Ss is the number of synonymous SNPs in putative coding regions, Lt is the total length of the contig, Lc is the length of the putative coding region, D is the average coverage depth, and Hn is the nth har monic number. Table 4 shows average and median values of Bt, Bn and Bs amongst contigs with at least 6× coverage for both species. Novaes et al. note that because B statistics are condi tioned on coverage depth rather than the actual number of haplotypes sampled, care must be taken in comparing to more traditional diversity estimates such as θ, However, these statistics do enable the study of relative genetic diversity within each transcriptome, and may speak to comparative diversity estimates for E.
propertius Combretastatin A-4 PP1 and P. zelicaon if allele sample rates are equal, The average coverage for E. propertius contigs in the top 1% of Bt was relatively low at 8. 8×, The average Bt for E. propertius con tigs in the top 1% of coverage also was low at 0. 68 × 10 3. For P. zelicaon, average coverage in the top 1% of Bt was 10. 64×, and the average Bt in the top 1% of coverage was 1. 29 × 10 3. Thus, for both species, very diverse contigs tend to have less than or near average coverage. conversely, highly cov ered contigs have low diversity. In the presence of large scale paralog collapse, we would expect to see many con tigs with high coverage and high B, which we have not found.
Discussion For E. propertius, the large Combretastatin A-4 sequences produced by the 454 FLX Titanium allowed for the formation of a 14. 6 Mbp assembly from 176 Mbp of EST PP1 sequence, with aver age contig coverage of 10× and average contig length of 753 bp. Similar results were obtained for P. zelicaon. Comparisons to Bombyx mori suggest that our final assemblies are of high quality. Because Bt was generally low for highly covered contigs, and nearly all variant regions had fewer variants than the number of genotypes sequenced, we see little evidence for over assembly and paralog collapse. Further, the fact that amongst the assemblies tested we have not seen a point of diminishing returns in terms of average ortholog hit ratio suggests that even more aggressive assemblers may pro duce more accurate assemblies for such diverse datasets.
Clustering results and comparison to the P. xuthus mitochondrial genome indicate the presence of ribo somal RNA in at least the P. zelicaon dataset. Although mitochondrial genes are polyadeny lated and appropriately found in our datasets, ribosomal RNAs are not, and hence should be considered contami nation. Combretastatin A-4 While such unigenes can easily be filtered after assembly, the fact that many of these were clustered via hits to a protein predicted dataset highlights the need for well annotated and curated reference data sets. Clustering results also reveal that greater than 90% of unigenes had no similarity with other unigenes, indicat ing thorough assemblies. We searched for five single copy genes present in B. mori, For those E. propertiu

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Historical Past Akin To DBeQCombretastatin A-4

ions substantially contributes to the less complete UTR representation in our study. Based on the information about the completeness of the identified transcripts, one may ask how much more sequencing PluriSln 1 effort would be needed to obtain nearly com plete transcript lengths of the majority of genes expressed in the bank vole heart. The relationship between tran script completeness and the per base coverage averaged over the total transcript length indicates that, to achieve 75% transcript completeness for transcripts 2 kb, 12 × coverage is needed, and, for longer transcripts even 20 × may be required. The coverage obtained in the present study varies widely, but for 75% of transcripts 2 kb, it was 0. 52 ×.

Thus, to achieve the 75% transcript completeness for 75% transcripts 2 kb with Dynasore the highest coverage, an additional 22 454 Titanium runs would be theoretically needed, and even more sequencing would be necessary to achieve completeness of longer tran scripts. However, 50% completeness of 75% transcripts 2 kb with the highest coverage would require only three additional runs. The median coverage for transcripts 2 kb obtained in our study was 1. 56×, sufficient to achieve ca. 50% completeness of the half of transcripts SNP differences between selection regimes SC144 Because most 454 sequencing errors are indels, we ana lyzed only substitution type single nucleotide polymor phisms in our data. In 19,114 of the SNPs detected by GigaBayes, each variant was present in at least 2 sequencing reads, minimising the impact of sequencing errors, We then compared frequencies of these SNPs between selection regimes.

Ribonucleotide Frequencies of 114 SNPs differed between the selection lines and unse lected control at the 10 4 significance level and 1301 at the 10 2 level, Searches of the second highest level Gene Ontology categories revealed BIO GSK-3 inhibitor that genes harboring SNPs that were differenti ated between the selection lines at 10 2 level were signifi cantly enriched only for organelle part, and the representation of SNP enriched genes was nonrandom. Further inspection of GO revealed that this was due to the highly significant overrepresentation of genes for mitochondrial proteins, It should be noted, however, that these genes were overrepresented among the contigs with highest per base coverage, constituting about half of these genes, which might have made detection of SNPs with significant differences among lineages eas ier due to the higher coverage.

Discussion Assembly quality The present study PluriSln 1 used a third generation BIO GSK-3 inhibitor of 454 technol ogy, which yielded a usable median read length of almost 350 bp. As expected, longer reads pro duced better assembly, in terms of the average and maxi mum contig length, than reported in most studies employing the first generation, GS20 and second generation, FLX, 454 technologies. Almost three thousand contigs in our dataset exceeded 1,000 bp sequences similar to those present in our dataset allowed detection of transcripts from a large number of putative genes. More than 11,000 Swiss Prot proteins and tran scripts of over 14,000 ENSEMBL mouse genes produced significant hits.

As evidenced by the PluriSln 1 searches for macro molecular complexes and essential metabolic pathways, our gene detection was practically complete for genes expressed in all tissues. With respect to heart muscle related gene discovery we found over 95% BIO GSK-3 inhibitor of 135 mam malian genes assigned GeneOntology categories related to cardiac muscle organization and contraction. Among and analyze them further, The results discussed in the following sections provide some explanation of the relatively high proportion of singletons. Transcript discovery and functional annotation of the transcriptome Mining the SwissProt protein database and the ENSEMBL collection of mouse transcripts for the most abundant transcripts in our study were those encoded in mitochondrial DNA. This is in accordance with results from SAGE analysis of the adult mouse heart transcriptome, which indicate that the cardiac