自体吞噬在细胞死亡中的角色

一直以来人们认为自主性细胞死亡就是凋亡。然而 ,最近的研究表明 ,自主性细胞死亡不仅包括凋亡 ,还包括自体吞噬。自体吞噬通过与凋亡不同的降解机制 (膜包被降解 )和分子机制 (特定基因的激活 ) ,使细胞在某些特殊环境如饥饿、发育、分化等条件下自主死亡。在自主性细胞死亡中 ,自体吞噬与凋亡是两个既相互独立又紧密相关的过程。对自体吞噬机制的了解 ,必将为自主性细胞死亡机制的阐明及其相关疾病的治疗提供新的思路。     

睾丸间质细胞—研究自体吞噬的一种正常细胞模型

In the present study, we tried to estimate, in a semiquantitative way, the relative frequency of the autophagic activity in various cell types under physiological condition. The results indicated that the highest activity appeared to be in the Leydig cells of rat testes. Autophagosomes were frequently observed in electron microscope photographs of Leydig cells, which provide a good model to study the autophagocytosis in normal cells. The autophagic process in Leydig cells was observed with the electron microscope in preparations treated to show CMPase activity. The mode of formation of autophagosomes in Leydig cells can be divided into three steps. Step 1, flattened membranous elements expand to enclose a small cytoplasmic territory to form pre-autophagosome. Step 2, The double membrane profile of the pre-autophagosome then completely encloses the cytoplasmic territory to form early autophagosome in which structurally normal organelles are contained. Step 3, the transformation of an early autophagosome into a late one is accompanied by the loss of one of the two delimiting membranes, the partial disintegration of the enclosed content and simultaneous acquisition of acid phosphatase activity. The enzymatic reactivity is acquired following a close association with the lysosomes. The late autophagosome then reaches the cell surface and appear to exocytose their residual content.     

F-box蛋白质在植物生长发育中的功能

在真核生物中, 泛素介导的蛋白降解途径参与了许多生物学过程。SCF复合体是一种非常重要的E3泛素连接酶, 在植物中研究的最为深入。F-box蛋白包含一个F-box 基序, 是SCF复合体的一个亚基, 它决定了底物识别的特异性。目前, 从各种植物中已鉴定出大量的F-box蛋白质, 它们参与了植物激素(乙烯, 生长素, GA, JA)的信号传导以及自交不亲和、花器官发育等生物学过程, F-box蛋白还参与了植物的胁迫反应。最新研究结果显示, 一个F-box蛋白TIR1是生长素的受体。因此, F-box蛋白质介导的泛素化蛋白质降解途径可能是植物基因表达调控的重要机制。     

睾丸间质细胞——研究自体吞噬的一种正常细胞模型

细胞在生理状态下自体吞噬出现的频率很低,很难用正常细胞来研究自体吞噬活动,一般都通过诱导自体吞噬来获得有关自体吞噬活动的资料。本实验观察了肝、肾、睾丸等组织的32种细胞,发现睾丸间质细胞中自体吞噬出现频率远远高于其他细胞,平均每100个细胞切面中可以看到25个自噬小体,从而为研究自体吞噬的过程和机理提供了一个正常细胞模型。本实验还观察到睾丸间质细胞的自体吞噬活动可分为前自噬小体、早期自噬小体和晚期自噬小体三个阶段,是一个连续的过程。前自噬小体和早期自噬小体不含溶酶体酶,只有在自噬小体与溶酶体接触后,才从后者获取溶酶体酶并将其内容物消化分解,成为晚期自噬小体。由自体吞噬所产生的残余体并不在睾丸间质细胞内积聚,而是通过胞吐作用排出细胞外。     

自体吞噬保护中枢神经系统免受辛德毕斯病毒感染

在抗病毒免疫中自体吞噬发挥一定功能。然而,内源性自噬基因对脊椎动物病毒感染性疾病的保护能力还未得到普遍认同。本研究发现自噬基因Atg5对保护中枢神经系统免受致死性辛德毕斯病毒（SIN）感染至关重要。Atg5失活将造成病毒蛋白清除滞后,细胞内P62接头分子堆积以及细胞死亡增加,而病毒复制水平不受影响。体外研究发现P62可与SIN衣壳蛋白相互作用,     

自体吞噬———Ⅱ型程序性死亡

自噬 (autophagy) 是广泛存在于真核细胞内的一种溶酶体依赖性的降解途径,在饥饿的条件下,它可以调节细胞内长寿命蛋白和细胞器的降解,降解产物再被细胞重新利用 . 因此自噬在细胞发育、细胞免疫、组织重塑及对环境适应等方面有着十分重要的作用 . 近来发现,自噬还参与降解病原微生物、抵御感染的过程,称之为异噬 . 对自噬的分子机制和调节以及其在生理病理过程中的作用进行相应讨论 .     

巨噬细胞吞噬功能的新检测法

介绍一种检测巨噬细胞吞噬功能的新方法──腹腔注射蛋白胨法,该方法操作简便,快速准确,效果良好。     

铜在植物生长发育中的作用

铜是植物正常生命活动所必需的 7种微量元素之一 ,参与植物生长发育过程中的多种代谢反应。铜是多酚氧化酶、抗坏血酸氧化酶、细胞色素氧化酶等的组成成分 ,参与植物体内的氧化还原过程。它也存在于叶绿体的质体蓝素中 ,参与光合作用的电子传递。1　植物对铜的吸收及其代谢植物通过根部从土壤中以离子形式吸收铜 ,也可通过叶面吸收。根部除了吸收溶解在土壤溶液中的铜以外 ,还能通过分泌出柠檬酸、苹果酸等有机酸以及呼吸作用形成的碳酸溶解难溶性物质以获取铜。影响根部吸收铜的因素除温度、通气状况、溶液浓度和离子间相互作用外 ,很重要…     

家蚕拟浆细胞具有吞噬功能

目的：通过观察家蚕Bombyx mori吞噬细胞的微细结构,来确定拟绛色细胞是否也具有吞噬功能。方法：用荧光小球微量注射家蚕pnd pS品系的幼虫,经荧光染色剂丫啶橙和碘化丙啶染色循环血细胞后,在荧光显微镜下观察并扫描拍摄。结果：观察发现除颗粒细胞和浆血细胞外,一些原血球细胞（血干细胞）和拟绛色细胞（多酚氧化酶）也能吞噬荧光小球。在拟绛色细胞里还发现许多和颗粒细胞一样的能被丫啶橙染色的颗粒。尽管在小球细胞中没有发现被吞噬的荧光小球,但该类血球有比较多的能被丫啶橙染色的大颗粒,这表明它们可能是已经被吞噬的凋亡小体。结论：除颗粒细胞和浆血细胞外,一些原血球细胞和拟绛色细胞也能吞噬荧光小球。说明拟绛色细胞也具有吞噬功能。     

SUMO E3连接酶在植物生长发育中的功能研究进展

SUMO化是真核生物中一种重要的蛋白质翻译后修饰。SUMO E3连接酶具有对底物特异的识别功能, 可以促进SUMO化反应, 是SUMO化修饰过程中的重要组成部分。目前, 在植物中已经鉴定出多种SUMO E3连接酶, 它们参与植物重要器官的发育调控。该文对植物SUMO E3连接酶在根系发育、开花途径、配子发育和光形态建成中的作用及其调节机制进行综述。     

植物细胞自噬研究进展

细胞自噬是一类依赖于溶酶体和液泡的蛋白质降解途径。在动物细胞中, 靶物质通过自噬体包裹被运送到溶酶体中,由特定的水解酶降解; 而植物和酵母细胞中该过程在液泡内进行。近年来, 在模式植物拟南芥(Arabidopsis thaliana)中鉴定到多个关键ATG基因, 它们对植物细胞自噬体的形成及自噬调控起到关键作用。该文全面综述了植物细胞自噬的调控及其在植物逆境胁迫中的生理功能。     

植物细胞自噬研究进展

细胞自噬是真核生物中进化保守的对细胞内物质进行周转的重要过程,该过程中一些损坏的蛋白或细胞器被双层膜结构的自噬小泡包裹后送入溶酶体(动物)或液泡(酵母和植物)中进行降解并得以循环利用。植物中通过序列比对鉴定了诸多自噬相关基因并分离到了部分细胞自噬功能缺陷的突变体,这些研究均推进了我们对植物细胞自噬机制和功能的了解。本文主要综述了植物细胞自噬分子机制和生理功能的研究进展。     

Autophagy proteins play cytoprotective and cytocidal roles in leucine starvation-induced cell death in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Autophagy is essential for prolonging yeast survival during nutrient deprivation; however, this report shows that some autophagy proteins may also be accelerating population death in those conditions. While leucine starvation caused YCA1-mediated apoptosis characterized by increased annexin V staining, nitrogen deprivation triggered necrotic death characterized by increased propidium iodide uptake. Although a Δatg8 strain died faster than its parental strain during nitrogen starvation, this mutant died slower than its parent during leucine starvation. Conversely, a Δatg11 strain died slower than its parent during nitrogen starvation, but faster during leucine starvation. Curiously, although GFP-Atg8 complemented the Δatg8 mutation, this protein made ATG8 cells more sensitive to nitrogen starvation, and less sensitive to leucine starvation. These results were difficult to explain if autophagy only extended life but could be an indication that a second form of autophagy could concurrently facilitate either apoptotic or necrotic cell death.     

Autophagy proteins play cytoprotective and cytocidal roles in leucine starvation-induced cell death in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Autophagy is essential for prolonging yeast survival during nutrient deprivation; however, this report shows that some autophagy proteins may also be accelerating population death in those conditions. While leucine starvation caused YCA1-mediated apoptosis characterized by increased annexin V staining, nitrogen deprivation triggered necrotic death characterized by increased propidium iodide uptake. Although a Δatg8 strain died faster than its parental strain during nitrogen starvation, this mutant died slower than its parent during leucine starvation. Conversely, a Δatg11 strain died slower than its parent during nitrogen starvation, but faster during leucine starvation. Curiously, although GFP-Atg8 complemented the Δatg8 mutation, this protein made ATG8 cells more sensitive to nitrogen starvation, and less sensitive to leucine starvation. These results were difficult to explain if autophagy only extended life but could be an indication that a second form of autophagy could concurrently facilitate either apoptotic or necrotic cell death.     

Autophagy in unicellular eukaryotes

Cells need a constant supply of precursors to enable the production of macromolecules to sustain growth and survival. Unlike metazoans, unicellular eukaryotes depend exclusively on the extracellular medium for this supply. When environmental nutrients become depleted, existing cytoplasmic components will be catabolized by (macro)autophagy in order to re-use building blocks and to support ATP production. In many cases, autophagy takes care of cellular housekeeping to sustain cellular viability. Autophagy encompasses a multitude of related and often highly specific processes that are implicated in both biogenetic and catabolic processes. Recent data indicate that in some unicellular eukaryotes that undergo profound differentiation during their life cycle (e.g. kinetoplastid parasites and amoebes), autophagy is essential for the developmental change that allows the cell to adapt to a new host or form spores. This review summarizes the knowledge on the molecular mechanisms of autophagy as well as the cytoplasm-to-vacuole-targeting pathway, pexophagy, mitophagy, ER-phagy, ribophagy and piecemeal microautophagy of the nucleus, all highly selective forms of autophagy that have first been uncovered in yeast species. Additionally, a detailed analysis will be presented on the state of knowledge on autophagy in non-yeast unicellular eukaryotes with emphasis on the role of this process in differentiation.     

Autophagy is required for ectoplasmic specialization assembly in sertoli cells

The ectoplasmic specialization (ES) is essential for Sertoli-germ cell communication to support all phases of germ cell development and maturity. Its formation and remodeling requires rapid reorganization of the cytoskeleton. However, the molecular mechanism underlying the regulation of ES assembly is still largely unknown. Here, we show that Sertoli cell-specific disruption of autophagy influenced male mouse fertility due to the resulting disorganized seminiferous tubules and spermatozoa with malformed heads. In autophagy-deficient mouse testes, cytoskeleton structures were disordered and ES assembly was disrupted. The disorganization of the cytoskeleton structures might be caused by the accumulation of a negative cytoskeleton organization regulator, PDLIM1, and these defects could be partially rescued by Pdlim1 knockdown in autophagy-deficient Sertoli cells. Altogether, our works reveal that the degradation of PDLIM1 by autophagy in Sertoli cells is important for the proper assembly of the ES, and these findings define a novel role for autophagy in Sertoli cell-germ cell communication.     

Autophagy functions on EMT in gastrulation of avian embryo

Autophagy is important for cell renewing for its contribution to the degradation of bulk cytoplasm, long-lived proteins, and entire organelles and its role in embryonic development is largely unknown. In our study, we investigated the function of autophagy in gastrulation of the chick embryo using both in vivo and in vitro approaches, especially in the EMT process, and we found that autophagy gene Atg7 was expressed on the apical side of the ectoderm and endoderm. Over-expression of Atg7 could enhance the expression of Atg8 and the E-cadherin, the latter of which is a crucial marker of the EMT process. We also found that the disturbance of autophagy could retard the development of chick embryos in HH4 with shorter primitive steak than that in the control group, which is a newly formed structure during EMT process. So we assumed that autophagy could affect EMT process by adhesion molecule expression. Moreover, more molecules, such as slug, chordin, shh et., which were all involved in EMT process, were detected to address the mechanism of this phenomena. We established that the inhibition of autophagy could cause developmental delay by affecting EMT process in gastrulation of chick embryos.     

细胞自噬在植物碳氮营养中作用的研究进展

自噬（autophagy）是真核生物细胞通过形成自噬体,回收利用胞内物质,维持细胞健康的高通量亚细胞降解途径。随着酵母和动物自噬研究的深入,植物自噬也受到越来越多的关注。近期的研究揭示了植物自噬的基本机制及其生理意义,也发现了植物特有的自噬形式与自噬相关基因。该文主要综述了自噬在植物碳、氮营养中的作用。     

细胞自噬的诱导及检测技术在细胞生物学实验教学中的应用实例

细胞自噬是一种在进化上高度保守的溶酶体吞噬降解自身成分的胞内代谢途径。它与多种生理功能有关,如在饥饿、刺激等不利环境条件下,细胞通过自噬降解多余或异常的大分子,为细胞的生存提供能量及原材料,促进生物体的生长发育、细胞分化及对环境变化产生应答。但是,过度的自噬可以导致细胞死亡,因此自噬又被称为II型程序性细胞死亡,这是除凋亡和坏死之外的一种新的细胞死亡方式。另外,自噬异常与多种病理过程如肿瘤、神经退行性病变、病原体感染等密切相关。由于细胞自噬在生理和病理过程中都发挥着重要作用,因此,自噬成为细胞生物学领域的一个新的研究热点。以细胞自噬为研究内容,设计了适合在本科生课程中开设的细胞自噬的诱导及观察实验项目,对该实验项目的实验原理、实验设计与安排等进行了详细的介绍,为该项目在实验课程中的推广提供了有益的参考。