调节细胞凋亡的新成员——ICE

调节细胞凋亡的新成员──ＩＣＥ阎水忠,吴旻（中国医学科学院,中国协和医科大学肿瘤研究所分子肿瘤学国家重点实验室,北京１０００２１）关键词细胞凋亡,ＩＬ－１β转换酶细胞凋亡（ａｐｏｐｔｏｓｉｓ）的研究近年来成为包括发育学、细胞生物学以及肿瘤学等多种学科...     

哺乳类ICE样蛋白酶的研究现状

ＩＣＥ样蛋白酶是一族Ａｓｐ特异性的半胱氨酸蛋白酶,其中源于浦乳类的有ＩＣＥ、ＩＣＥｒｅｌⅡ／ＩＣＨ－２／ＴＸ、ＩＣＥｒｅｌⅢ、ＩＣＥ－／Ｎｅｄｄ－２、Ｍｃｈ２、Ｍｃｈ３、ＣＰＰ３２／Ｙａ－ｍａ／Ａｐｏｐａｉｎ以及ＩＣＥ－ＬＡＰ３。本文就有关这些哺乳类ＩＣＥ样蛋白酶的共同特点、作用底物、活性调节以及与细胞凋亡和某些疾病的关系的研究现状进行了简要综述。     

What Are Punishment and Reputation for?

Why did punishment and the use of reputation evolve in humans? According to one family of theories, they evolved to support the maintenance of cooperative group norms; according to another, they evolved to enhance personal gains from cooperation. Current behavioral data are consistent with both hypotheses (and both selection pressures could have shaped human cooperative psychology). However, these hypotheses lead to sharply divergent behavioral predictions in circumstances that have not yet been tested. Here we report results testing these rival predictions. In every test where social exchange theory and group norm maintenance theory made different predictions, subject behavior violated the predictions of group norm maintenance theory and matched those of social exchange theory. Subjects do not direct punishment toward those with reputations for norm violation per se; instead, they use reputation self-beneficially, as a cue to lower the risk that they personally will experience losses from defection. More tellingly, subjects direct their cooperative efforts preferentially towards defectors they have punished and away from those they haven’t punished; they avoid expending punitive effort on reforming defectors who only pose a risk to others. These results are not consistent with the hypothesis that the psychology of punishment evolved to uphold group norms. The circumstances in which punishment is deployed and withheld–its circuit logic–support the hypothesis that it is generated by psychological mechanisms that evolved to benefit the punisher, by allowing him to bargain for better treatment.     

First Announcement of and Call for Papers for ＂Forum on Genetics Progress and Human Health＂

＂Forum on Genetics Progress and Human Health＂ will be held at Yunnan University in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, in November, 2007. The forum focuses on the current progress and future directions in all major aspects of human genetics and medical genetics. The submitted papers written in English will be considered for publication in Journal of Genetics and Genomics after peer-review and papers in Chinese in Hereditas （Beijing）. Papers＇ in the following areas are encouraged for submission and outstanding papers will be selected for oral presentation in the forum.     

First Announcement of and Call for Papers for ＂Forum on Genetics Progress and Human Health＂

＂Forum on Genetics Progress and Human Health＂ will be held at Yunnan University in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, in November, 2007. The forum focuses on the current progress and future directions in all major aspects of human genetics and medical genetics. The submitted papers written in English will be considered for publication in Journal of Genetics and Genomics after peer-review and papers in Chinese in Hereditas （Beijing）. Papers in the following areas are encouraged for submission and outstanding papers will be selected for oral presentation in the forum.     

Actin Cross-link Assembly and Disassembly Mechanics for α-Actinin and Fascin

Self-assembly of complex structures is commonplace in biology but often poorly understood. In the case of the actin cytoskeleton, a great deal is known about the components that include higher order structures, such as lamellar meshes, filopodial bundles, and stress fibers. Each of these cytoskeletal structures contains actin filaments and cross-linking proteins, but the role of cross-linking proteins in the initial steps of structure formation has not been clearly elucidated. We employ an optical trapping assay to investigate the behaviors of two actin cross-linking proteins, fascin and α-actinin, during the first steps of structure assembly. Here, we show that these proteins have distinct binding characteristics that cause them to recognize and cross-link filaments that are arranged with specific geometries. α-Actinin is a promiscuous cross-linker, linking filaments over all angles. It retains this flexibility after cross-links are formed, maintaining a connection even when the link is rotated. Conversely, fascin is extremely selective, only cross-linking filaments in a parallel orientation. Surprisingly, bundles formed by either protein are extremely stable, persisting for over 0.5 h in a continuous wash. However, using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching and fluorescence decay experiments, we find that the stable fascin population can be rapidly competed away by free fascin. We present a simple avidity model for this cross-link dissociation behavior. Together, these results place constraints on how cytoskeletal structures assemble, organize, and disassemble in vivo.     

DCCP and DICP： Construction and Analyses of Databases for Copper- and Iron-Chelating Proteins

Copper and iron play important roles in a variety of biological processes, especially when being chelated with proteins. The proteins involved in the metal binding, transporting and metabolism have aroused much interest. To facilitate the study on this topic, we constructed two databases （DCCP and DICP） containing the known copper- and iron-chelating proteins~ which are freely available from the website http：//sdbi.sdut.edu.cn/en. Users can conveniently search and browse all of the entries in the databases. Based on the two databases, bioinformatic analyses were performed, which provided some novel insights into metalloproteins.     

软枣猕猴ICE1基因克隆与生物信息学分析

[目的]为研究软枣猕猴桃ICE1基因的生物学功能及抗寒分子机制奠定基础。[方法]以4℃低温处理24 h的软枣猕猴桃(Actinidia arguta Planch) c DNA为模板,通过反转录PCR技术克隆ICE1基因。[结果]该基因c DNA长1524 bp,可编码507个氨基酸。生物信息学分析显示ICE1基因是编码MYC2型的b HLH转录因子,编码蛋白是定位于细胞核的非跨膜亲水蛋白。推导的氨基酸序列与中华猕猴桃(Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis)和山葡萄(Vitis amurensis) ICE1存在着较高的同源性。[结论]成功克隆到软枣猕猴桃抗寒转录因子命名为AaICE1。     

Lactobacilli and enterococci — Potential probiotics for dogs

Forty strains of enterococci and forty strains of lactobacilli isolated from feces of 10 healthy dogs were tested for the antimicrobial activity, tolerance to bile and adhesion activity. The total count of fecal enterococci reached 5.5 log CFU/g and of lactobacilli 7.6 log CFU/g. Screening for production of bacteriocin-like substances showed an to partly inhibit the growth of Enterobacter sp. (hazy zones of inhibition). Ten strains of Enterococcus sp. and nine strains of Lactobacillus sp. were found without any inhibitory activity against all indicators used. Seven enterococcal strains and six lactobacilli with the broadest antimicrobial spectrum were selected for further probiotic assays. In the presence of 1% bile, the survival rate of selected enterococci (71.7-97.5%) was higher than that of lactobacilli (66.7-75.4%). The adhesion of strains to human intestinal mucus (5.1-8.2% by enterococci, 2.7-8.3% by lactobacilli) was found to be similar as adhesion to canine intestinal mucus (3.7-10.6% by enterococci, 2.1-6.0% by lactobacilli). Strain AD1, one lactobacillus isolate, reduced the higher level of serum cholesterol and alanine aminotransferase after oral administration to dogs suffering from diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.     

Is the Brain's Inertia for Motor Movements Different for Acceleration and Deceleration?

The brain''s ability to synchronize movements with external cues is used daily, yet neuroscience is far from a full understanding of the brain mechanisms that facilitate and set behavioral limits on these sequential performances. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was designed to help understand the neural basis of behavioral performance differences on a synchronizing movement task during increasing (acceleration) and decreasing (deceleration) metronome rates. In the MRI scanner, subjects were instructed to tap their right index finger on a response box in synchrony to visual cues presented on a display screen. The tapping rate varied either continuously or in discrete steps ranging from 0.5 Hz to 3 Hz. Subjects were able to synchronize better during continuously accelerating rhythms than in continuously or discretely decelerating rhythms. The fMRI data revealed that the precuneus was activated more during continuous deceleration than during acceleration with the hysteresis effect significant at rhythm rates above 1 Hz. From the behavioral data, two performance measures, tapping rate and synchrony index, were derived to further analyze the relative brain activity during acceleration and deceleration of rhythms. Tapping rate was associated with a greater brain activity during deceleration in the cerebellum, superior temporal gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus. Synchrony index was associated with a greater activity during the continuous acceleration phase than during the continuous deceleration or discrete acceleration phases in a distributed network of regions including the prefrontal cortex and precuneus. These results indicate that the brain''s inertia for movement is different for acceleration and deceleration, which may have implications in understanding the origin of our perceptual and behavioral limits.