朊病毒,应改名

Prion是感染性蛋白质,能引发疯牛病等海绵状脑病。朊病毒是其被广泛沿用的中文译名．暗示prion是某种病毒。实际上,prion是蛋白质,不是病毒。朊病毒这个名字与实际不副,可能误导人们对prion的认识．也会误导对海绵状脑病的防治。因此,朊病毒不宜继续沿用下去,而应另起名实相副的新名。     

糖微阵列技术在糖组学研究中的进展

聚糖多以蛋白质和脂配基形式存在,在生物体内的信息传递、细胞识别和蛋白质折叠等生物过程中具有十分重要作用,是继核酸和蛋白质之后被发现的第三类生物信息分子.但聚糖结构复杂,并存在大量异构体,无法象DNA一样进行合成和测序.根据聚糖分子能够与凝集素或糖结合蛋白特异性结合,提出并发展了糖微阵列技术.此技术在聚糖结构与功能研究中已显示出优越性.通过对糖微阵列构建方式及检测方法的探讨,对近些年来糖微阵列技术的发展进行了综述.     

遗传物质的横向传递与转基因植物的安全性

横向传递是在同种或异种生物不同个体之间沿水平方向进行遗传物质的单方向转移,有多种不同的转移方式。在生物界中,遗传物质的横向传递通常是借助某种载体如病毒来完成,高等生物还可以通过有性生殖在同种生物不同个体之间或异种生物不同个体之间传递遗传物质。基因的横向传递是普遍存在的,是生物进化的重要动力之一。转基因植物是人工遗传物质横向转移的结果,人工遗传物质横向转移正在越来越明显地影响着生物的生存状态。     

分子生物学数据库及相关软件的开发利用

生物大分子序列和结构测定技术的完善和应用,使核酸及蛋白质序列数据库及蛋白质结构数据库迅速增长.面对不断增长的分子生物信息,很多生物学工作者又在此基础上构建了具有特殊生物学意义和专门用途的二次数据库,使得数据库的内容和种类更加丰富和具体,为生物学各个领域的深入研究提供了坚实的信息基础.     

分子生物学数据库及相关软件的开发利用

生物大分子序列和结构测定技术的完善和应用,使核酸及蛋白质序列数据库及蛋白质结构数据库迅速增长。面对不断增长的分子生物信息,很多生物学工作者又在此基础上构建了具有特殊生物学意义和专门用途的二次数据库,使得数据库的内容和种类更加丰富和具体,为生物学各个领域的深入研究提供了坚实的信息基础。由法国生物信息研究中心Ｉｎｆｏｂｉｏｇｅｎ提供的生物数据库目录ｄｂｃａｔ〔１〕可以使用户对目前世界各地提供的分子生物信息数据库有一个详尽的了解。ｄｂｃａｔ本身也是一个具有一定数据格式的数据库,按ＤＮＡ、ＲＮＡ、蛋白质…     

“基因对性状的控制”一节的教学尝试

“基因对性状的控制一节既是“遗传和变异”一章中的重点,又是难点。它要求学生懂得生物之所以表现一定的性状,是由于遗传物质的基本单位——基因传递遗传信息,控制一定结构的蛋白质合成,从而体现一定的性状。为什么有一定的基因就有一定的性状?遗传信息是怎样传递的呢?由于内容抽象,要讲清这个问题,如果只采用讲授法,教学双方都会很吃力。     

人类基因组计划及中国的1％

由美、英、日、德、法、中六国科学家联手合作的人类基因组计划（ＨｕｍａｎＧｅｎｏｍｅＰｒｏｊｅｃｔ,ＨＧＰ） ,是自然科学史上最伟大的创举之一 ,“人类基因组计划”的核心 ,就是测定人类基因组的全部ＤＮＡ序列 ,从而获得人类全面认识自我最重要的生物学信息。人类的遗传物质是脱氧核糖核酸 ,即ＤＮＡ。在２０世纪４０年代以前 ,人们一直认为蛋白质在遗传中起决定作用。直到１９４４年科学家埃弗里等人实验证明 :决定生物遗传性的物质不是蛋白质而是ＤＮＡ。ＤＮＡ是除ＲＮＡ病毒和ＲＮＡ噬菌体外其它所有生物的遗传物质基础。遗传的…     

tsRNA研究进展与展望

tRNA-derived small RNAs(tsRNA)是近年来发现的、存在于多种生物体内的一类非编码小RNA,来源于成熟tRNA或tRNA前体,其表达和修饰具有组织和细胞特异性. tsRNA参与应激反应、蛋白质翻译调控、核糖体生物合成、肿瘤发生、细胞增殖与凋亡、表观遗传信息的跨代传递等多种生理和病理过程. 本文主要对tsRNA的生成及分类、已知的生物学功能及作用机理、tsRNA 及其修饰在疾病中的作用等进行了综述.     

基于质谱技术的糖链结构解析研究进展

糖组学是继基因组学、蛋白质组学之后,又一门新兴的学科,其主要是研究糖分子的结构与功能.糖是一类比核酸、蛋白质更加独特的生物分子,它们不仅是生物体储存能量和释放能量的主要物质,更是生物体内的信息传递分子,并且在生理和病理过程中扮演着重要的角色,如细胞间的识别作用、炎症以及自身免疫疾病等.在结构上,糖类物质更为复杂,具有宏观不均一性(蛋白质上有多个糖基化位点)和微观不均一性(同一结合位点上可以连接不同的多糖),所以糖链的结构解析一直是糖组学研究的难题.相较于传统的分析方法,质谱法具有高灵敏度、高精度、高通量等优势,被认为是在糖链结构解析过程中重要的分析方法.本文综述了质谱、多级质谱、液相色谱-质谱、毛细管电泳-质谱等方法在糖组学中糖链结构解析的研究进展.     

“蛋白质和核酸”的教学组织

生命是物质的。生命的本质在于生命大分子间的相互作用。阐明生命现象的规律,必须建立在阐明生物大分子结构与功能的基础上。蛋白质和核酸是2种重要的生物大分子,蛋白质是生命活动的主要承担者,核酸是遗传信息的携带者和传递执行者。遗传信息的多样性决定蛋白质分子的多样性,进而体现生命系统的复杂性和多样性。生物学新课程标准对该部分的要求是：     

Prion Stability and Infectivity in the Environment

The biology of normal prion protein and the property of infectivity observed in abnormal folding conformations remain thinly characterized. However, enough is known to understand that prion proteins stretch traditional views of proteins in biological systems. Numerous investigators are resolving details of the novel mechanism of infectivity, which appears to feature a protein-only, homologous replication of misfolded isoforms. Many other features of prion biology are equally extraordinary. This review focuses on the status of infectious prions in various natural and man-made environments. The picture that emerges is that prion proteins are durable under extreme conditions of environmental exposure that are uncommon in biological phenomena, and this durability offers the potential for environmental reservoirs of persistent infectivity lasting for years. A recurrent theme in prion research is a propensity for these proteins to bind to mineral and metal surfaces, and several investigators have provided evidence that the normal cellular functions of prion protein may include metalloprotein interactions. This structural propensity for binding to mineral and metal ions offers the hypothesis that prion polypeptides are intrinsically predisposed to non-physiological folding conformations that would account for their environmental durability and persistent infectivity. Similarly, the avidity of binding and potency of prion infectivity from environmental sources also offers a recent hypothesis that prion polypeptides bound to soil minerals are actually more infectious than studies with purified polypeptides would predict. Since certain of the prion diseases have a history of epidemics in economically important animal species and have the potential to transmit to humans, urgency is attached to understanding the environmental transmission of prion diseases and the development of protocols for their containment and inactivation. Special issue article in honor of Dr. George DeVries.     

Soluble oligomers are sufficient for transmission of a yeast prion but do not confer phenotype

Amyloidogenic proteins aggregate through a self-templating mechanism that likely involves oligomeric or prefibrillar intermediates. For disease-associated amyloidogenic proteins, such intermediates have been suggested to be the primary cause of cellular toxicity. However, isolation and characterization of these oligomeric intermediates has proven difficult, sparking controversy over their biological relevance in disease pathology. Here, we describe an oligomeric species of a yeast prion protein in cells that is sufficient for prion transmission and infectivity. These oligomers differ from the classic prion aggregates in that they are soluble and less resistant to SDS. We found that large, SDS-resistant aggregates were required for the prion phenotype but that soluble, more SDS-sensitive oligomers contained all the information necessary to transmit the prion conformation. Thus, we identified distinct functional requirements of two types of prion species for this endogenous epigenetic element. Furthermore, the nontoxic, self-replicating amyloid conformers of yeast prion proteins have again provided valuable insight into the mechanisms of amyloid formation and propagation in cells.     

Prion protein gene-deficient cell lines: powerful tools for prion biology

Prion diseases are zoonotic infectious diseases commonly transmissible among animals via prion infections with an accompanying deficiency of cellular prion protein (PrP(C)) and accumulation of an abnormal isoform of prion protein (PrP(Sc)), which are observed in neurons in the event of injury and disease. To understand the role of PrP(C) in the neuron in health and diseases, we have established an immortalized neuronal cell line HpL3-4 from primary hippocampal cells of prion protein (PrP) gene-deficient mice by using a retroviral vector encoding Simian Virus 40 Large T antigen (SV40 LTag). The HpL3-4 cells exhibit cell-type-specific proteins for the neuronal precursor lineage. Recently, this group and other groups have established PrP-deficient cell lines from many kinds of cell types including glia, fibroblasts and neuronal cells, which will have a broad range of applications in prion biology. In this review, we focus on recently obtained information about PrP functions and possible studies on prion infections using the PrPdeficient cell lines.     

Pros and cons of a prion-like pathogenesis in Parkinson's disease

Background  

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a slowly progressive neurodegenerative disorder which affects widespread areas of the brainstem, basal ganglia and cerebral cortex. A number of proteins are known to accumulate in parkinsonian brains including ubiquitin and α-synuclein. Prion diseases are sporadic, genetic or infectious disorders with various clinical and histopathological features caused by prion proteins as infectious proteinaceous particles transmitting a misfolded protein configuration through brain tissue. The most important form is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which is associated with a self-propagating pathological precursor form of the prion protein that is physiologically widely distributed in the central nervous system.     

LIV-1 ZIP Ectodomain Shedding in Prion-Infected Mice Resembles Cellular Response to Transition Metal Starvation

We recently documented the co-purification of members of the LIV-1 subfamily of ZIP (Zrt-, Irt-like Protein) zinc transporters (LZTs) with the cellular prion protein (PrP(C)) and, subsequently, established that the prion gene family descended from an ancestral LZT gene. Here, we begin to address whether the study of LZTs can shed light on the biology of prion proteins in health and disease. Starting from an observation of an abnormal LZT immunoreactive band in prion-infected mice, subsequent cell biological analyses uncovered a surprisingly coordinated biology of ZIP10 (an LZT member) and prion proteins that involves alterations to N-glycosylation and endoproteolysis in response to manipulations to the extracellular divalent cation milieu. Starving cells of manganese or zinc, but not copper, causes shedding of the N1 fragment of PrP(C) and of the ectodomain of ZIP10. For ZIP10, this posttranslational biology is influenced by an interaction between its PrP-like ectodomain and a conserved metal coordination site within its C-terminal multi-spanning transmembrane domain. The transition metal starvation-induced cleavage of ZIP10 can be differentiated by an immature N-glycosylation signature from a constitutive cleavage targeting the same site. Data from this work provide a first glimpse into a hitherto neglected molecular biology that ties PrP to its LZT cousins and suggest that manganese or zinc starvation may contribute to the etiology of prion disease in mice.     

How Distinctive is Genetic Information?

There is extensive discussion of the ethical, social, economic and political issues associated with the use of technologies based on DNA techniques. Many of these debates are premised on the assumption that DNA, and the genetic information that may be derived from it, have unique features which raise new social and ethical issues. In this paper it is argued that several of the features associated with DNA which are sometimes regarded as unique are shared with other biological materials. Others owe more to the cultural image of DNA and some of the metaphors used to discuss it in biology and in wider debates than to the biological properties of DNA. The paper discusses the concepts of genetic material and genetic information and the social construction of DNA in relation to forensic DNA databases, paternity testing and genetic testing for disease. The paper concludes by suggesting that there are seven areas where issues related to DNA and genetic information are at least relatively distinct.     

More than Just a Phase: Prions at the Crossroads of Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolutionary Change

A central tenet of molecular biology is that heritable information is stored in nucleic acids. However, this paradigm has been overturned by a group of proteins called “prions.” Prion proteins, many of which are intrinsically disordered, can adopt multiple conformations, at least one of which has the capacity to self-template. This unusual folding landscape drives a form of extreme epigenetic inheritance that can be stable through both mitotic and meiotic cell divisions. Although the first prion discovered—mammalian PrP—is the causative agent of debilitating neuropathies, many additional prions have now been identified that are not obviously detrimental and can even be adaptive. Intrinsically disordered regions, which endow proteins with the bulk property of “phase-separation,” can also be drivers of prion formation. Indeed, many protein domains that promote phase separation have been described as prion-like. In this review, we describe how prions lie at the crossroads of phase separation, epigenetic inheritance, and evolutionary adaptation.     

Natural and experimental prion diseases of humans and animals.

Prions cause transmissible and genetic neurodegenerative diseases. Infectious prion particles are composed largely, if not entirely, of an abnormal isoform of the prion protein (PrPSc), which is encoded by a chromosomal gene. Although the PrP gene is single copy, transgenic mice with both alleles of the PrP gene ablated develop normally. A post-translational process, as yet unidentified, converts the cellular prion protein (PrPC) into PrPSc. Scrapie incubation times, neuropathology and prion synthesis in transgenic mice are controlled by the PrP gene. Mutations in this gene are genetically linked to the development of neurodegeneration. Transgenic mice expressing mutant PrP spontaneously develop neurological dysfunction and spongiform neuropathology. Future investigations of prion diseases using molecular biological and genetic approaches promise to yield much new information about these once enigmatic disorders.     

Mouse Models for Studying the Formation and Propagation of Prions

Prions are self-propagating protein conformers that cause a variety of neurodegenerative disorders in humans and animals. Mouse models have played key roles in deciphering the biology of prions and in assessing candidate therapeutics. The development of transgenic mice that form prions spontaneously in the brain has advanced our understanding of sporadic and genetic prion diseases. Furthermore, the realization that many proteins can become prions has necessitated the development of mouse models for assessing the potential transmissibility of common neurodegenerative diseases. As the universe of prion diseases continues to expand, mouse models will remain crucial for interrogating these devastating illnesses.