Notch signaling:Its essential roles in bone and craniofacial development

Notch is a cellecell signaling pathway that is involved in a host of activities including development,oncogenesis,skeletal homeostasis,and much more.More specifically,recent research has demonstrated the importance of Notch signaling in osteogenic differentiation,bone healing,and in the development of the skeleton.The craniofacial skeleton is complex and understanding its development has remained an important focus in biology.In this review we briefly summarize what recent research has revealed about Notch signaling and the current understanding of how the skeleton,skull,and face develop.We then discuss the crucial role that Notch plays in both craniofacial development and the skeletal system,and what importance it may play in the future.

SATB2:A versatile transcriptional regulator of craniofacial and skeleton development,neurogenesis and tumorigenesis,and its applications in regenerative medicine

SATB2(special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 2)is a member of the special AT-rich binding protein family.As a transcription regulator,SATB2 mainly integrates higher-order chromatin organization.SATB2 expression appears to be tissue-and stage-specific,and is governed by several cellular signaling molecules and mediators.Expressed in branchial arches and osteoblast-lineage cells,SATB2 plays a significant role in craniofacial pattern and skeleton development.In addition to regulating osteogenic differentiation,SATB2 also displays versatile functions in neural development and cancer progression.As an osteoinductive factor,SATB2 holds great promise in improving bone regeneration toward bone defect repair.In this review,we have summarized our current understanding of the physiological and pathological functions of SATB2 in craniofacial and skeleton development,neurogenesis,tumorigenesis and regenerative medicine.

Development of a simplified and inexpensive RNA depletion method for plasmid DNA purification using size selection magnetic beads(SSMBs)

Plasmid DNA(pDNA)isolation from bacterial cells is one of the most common and critical steps in molecular cloning and biomedical research.Almost all pDNA purification in-volves disruption of bacteria,removal of membrane lipids,proteins and genomic DNA,purifi-cation of pDNA from bulk lysate,and concentration of pDNA for downstream applications.While many liquid-phase and solid-phase pDNA purification methods are used,the final pDNA preparations are usually contaminated with varied degrees of host RNA,which cannot be completely digested by RNase A.To develop a simple,cost-effective,and yet effective method for RNA depletion,we investigated whether commercially available size selection magnetic beads(SSMBs),such as Mag-Bind®TotalPure NGS Kit(or Mag-Bind),can completely deplete bacterial RNA in pDNA preparations.In this proof-of-principle study,we demonstrated that,compared with RNase A digestion and two commercial plasmid affinity purification kits,the SSMB method was highly efficient in depleting contaminating RNA from pDNA minipreps.Gene transfection and bacterial colony formation assays revealed that pDNA purified from SSMB method had superior quality and integrity to pDNA samples cleaned up by RNase A digestion and/or commercial plasmid purification kits.We further demonstrated that the SSMB method completely depleted contaminating RNA in large-scale pDNA samples.Furthermore,the Mag-bind-based SSMB method costs only 5-10%of most commercial plasmid purification kits on a per sample basis.Thus,the reported SSMB method can be a valuable and inexpensive tool for the removal of bacterial RNA for routine pDNA preparations.