No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Metallothionein (MT) is a potent hydroxyl radical scavenger but its antioxidant properties in vivo have not been defined. Most of the recent results indicate that it does not afford protection to cells against the lethal action of oxidative stress. However, the possibility that MT confers protection against oxidative damage to a specific cellular target, such as DNA, had not been considered. We compared V79 Chinese hamster cells enriched in and depleted of MT in terms of DNA-strand scission. Zinc induces an increase in MT content of V79 Chinese hamster cells, without concomitant increase in the GSH level. These induced cells are more resistant to the production of DNA-strand scission by H2O2 than the parental cells. Conversely, cells rendered partially deprived of MT, by transfection with a plasmid vector in which the MT-I cDNA is antisense oriented in relation to a simian virus 40 promoter, became more susceptible to the DNA-damaging action of H2O2. The transfected cells did not exhibit alterations of GSH, superoxide dismutase- and H2O2-destroying enzymes. Indirect immunofluorescence indicated that most of the MT was concentrated in the cell nucleus. Neither overexpression nor lower expression of MT resulted in differential resistance to the killing action of H2O2. However, the combined high nuclear concentration of MT and its excellent hydroxyl scavenger properties confer protection to DNA from hydroxyl radical attack.

Phenanthroline, a strong iron chelator, prevents both the formation of DNA single-strand breaks and the killing of mouse cells produced by H2O2. These results, taken together with our previous findings, indicate that the DNA damage is produced by hydroxyl radicals formed when H2O2 reacts with chromatin-bound Fe2+ and that this damage is responsible for the killing effect.

No abstract

No abstract

BackgroundThe journal Impact factor (IF) is generally accepted to be a good measurement of the relevance/quality of articles that a journal publishes. In spite of an, apparently, homogenous peer-review process for a given journal, we hypothesize that the country affiliation of authors from developing Latin American (LA) countries affects the IF of a journal detrimentally.Methodology/Principal FindingsSeven prestigious international journals, one multidisciplinary journal and six serving specific branches of science, were examined in terms of their IF in the Web of Science. Two subsets of each journal were then selected to evaluate the influence of author's affiliation on the IF. They comprised contributions (i) with authorship from four Latin American (LA) countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and (ii) with authorship from five developed countries (England, France, Germany, Japan and USA). Both subsets were further subdivided into two groups: articles with authorship from one country only and collaborative articles with authorship from other countries. Articles from the five developed countries had IF close to the overall IF of the journals and the influence of collaboration on this value was minor. In the case of LA articles the effect of collaboration (virtually all with developed countries) was significant. The IFs for non-collaborative articles averaged 66% of the overall IF of the journals whereas the articles in collaboration raised the IFs to values close to the overall IF.Conclusion/SignificanceThe study shows a significantly lower IF in the group of the subsets of non-collaborative LA articles and thus that country affiliation of authors from non-developed LA countries does affect the IF of a journal detrimentally. There are no data to indicate whether the lower IFs of LA articles were due to their inherent inferior quality/relevance or psycho-social trend towards under-citation of articles from these countries. However, further study is required since there are foreseeable consequences of this trend as it may stimulate strategies by editors to turn down articles that tend to be under-cited.