Alice’s Adventures in Scienceland

Abstract

Lewis Carroll based much of his nonsense humour and curious themes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass on his expertise in logic and mathematics. Years after the books were written, Alice, under the guidance of new authors, is experiencing new adventures in different regions of Scienceland, from Quantumland to Computerland. Situations, characters and concepts from Carroll's books on Alice are often reused in different scientific fields to illustrate scientific phenomena. Alice has become an archetype placeholder name for experimentalists in physics and cryptology. Carroll's books on Alice have been adopted by the scientific community and it seems that, although it is characteristic for science to keep changing, Alice's adventures in Scienceland are here to stay.

Cobalt Protoporphyrin Pretreatment Protects Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes From Hypoxia/Reoxygenation Injury In Vitro and Increases Graft Size and Vascularization In Vivo

“…However, even with these advances, achieving substantial cardiomyocyte grafts in the acute infarct setting has remained a challenge [2,4,21]. HO-1 induction is an attractive preconditioning regimen for donor cells because, as a single agent, it simultaneously upregulates both cytoprotective and proangiogenic pathways [47,48], while supporting mitochondrial homeostasis [13,49] and biogenesis [50]. HO-1 transcription plays a critical role in the endogenous cellular response to oxidative stress in the heart.…”

“…HO-1 catalyzes the rate-limiting step that degrades free heme, a potent prooxidant, into two ameliorative end products: biliverdin and carbon monoxide. Biliverdin is rapidly converted into bilirubin, a powerful antioxidant and antiapoptotic factor [51,52], whereas carbon monoxide itself has both antiapoptotic and proangiogenic functions [13,49,[53][54][55]. Both bilirubin and carbon monoxide activate cell survival genes through the phosphatidylinositol 3kinase/Akt pathway [50,52,53].…”