S.S. Shapiro's scientific contributions
Publications (3)
The protease-activated receptor-2 (PAR-2) belongs to the family of seven transmembrane domain receptors, which are activated by the specific enzymatic cleavage of their extracellular amino termini. Synthetic peptides corresponding to the tethered ligand domain (SLIGRL in mouse, SLIGKV in human) can activate PAR-2 without the need for receptor cleav...
Close association exists between melanocytes, the pigment melanin-producing cells in the body, and their neighboring keratinocytes. Keratinocytes are the pigment recipients and skin pigmentation is the result of this interaction. While the chemical basis of melanin production (melanogenesis) is well documented, the molecular mechanism of melanosome...
Programmed cell death is a controlled process that leads to the elimination of single cells via apoptosis. Programmed cell death is fundamental to development, morphogenesis, and homeostasis. Proteases play a major role in the death process. We have previously shown that a serine protease, secreted by a keratinocyte cell line, can induce apoptosis...
Citations
... [90,[97][98][99][100][101][102] This likely occurs through increased actin dynamics. [103][104][105] This is of critical importance given that the racial origin of keratinocytes determines the pattern of melanosome transfer regardless of the racial origin of ...
... We also demonstrated that MeDHICA-melanin was able to enter keratinocytes, although, as expected, only Low molecular weight components such as dimeric compounds were appreciably internalized after 1 h incubation. These data provide further confirmation to biological studies indicating that keratinocytes are able to internalize melanins as the result of a cross-talk with melanocytes, mediated by the protease-activated receptor 2 (PAR-2) and the Ras-related protein Rab11 [59,60]. Overall, our findings demonstrate that MeDHICA-melanin is able to enter the cells and activate the antioxidant system to protect skin cells from UVA-induced damage, encouraging its use as an effective component in dermo-cosmetic formulations for the treatment of skin damage, photoaging and skin cancers. ...
... Trypsin is a serine peptidase that hydrolyses proteins and has physiological importance in food protein digestion in several invertebrate species (Muhlia-Almaz an et al. 2008). Other physiological functions have been described for trypsin, such as an important role in apoptosis in several organisms (Seiberg et al. 1997;Toubarro et al. 2009;Tian & Ouyang 2010). It has been suggested that the polymorphism of trypsin genes indicates diverse possibilities for regulating the expression of trypsin (Klein et al. 1998). ...
