Identification of eight members of the Argonaute family in the human genome

A number of genes have been identified as members of the Argonaute family in various nonhuman organisms and these genes are considered to play important roles in the development and maintenance of germ-line stem cells. In this study, we identified the human Argonaute family, consisting of eight members. Proteins to be produced from these family members retain a common architecture with the PAZ motif in the middle and Piwi motif in the C-terminal region. Based on the sequence comparison, eight members of the Argonaute family were classified into two subfamilies: the PIWI subfamily (PIWIL1/HIWI, PIWIL2/HILI, PIWIL3, and PIWIL4/HIWI2) and the eIF2C/AGO subfamily (EIF2C1/hAGO1, EIF2C2/hAGO2, EIF2C3/hAGO3, and EIF2C4/hAGO4). PCR analysis using human multitissue cDNA panels indicated that all four members of the PIWI subfamily are expressed mainly in the testis, whereas all four members of the eIF2C/AGO subfamily are expressed in a variety of adult tissues. Immunoprecipitation and affinity binding experiments using human HEK293 cells cotransfected with cDNAs for FLAG-tagged DICER, a member of the ribonuclease III family, and the His-tagged members of the Argonaute family suggested that the proteins from members of both subfamilies are associated with DICER. We postulate that at least some members of the human Argonaute family may be involved in the development and maintenance of stem cells through the RNA-mediated gene-quelling mechanisms associated with DICER.     

Probucol-Induced α-Tocopherol Deficiency Protects Mice against Malaria Infection

The emergence of malaria pathogens having resistance against antimalarials implies the necessity for the development of new drugs. Recently, we have demonstrated a resistance against malaria infection of α-tocopherol transfer protein knockout mice showing undetectable plasma levels of α-tocopherol, a lipid-soluble antioxidant. However, dietary restriction induced α-tocopherol deficiency is difficult to be applied as a clinical antimalarial therapy. Here, we report on a new strategy to potentially treat malaria by using probucol, a drug that can reduce the plasma α-tocopherol concentration. Probucol pre-treatment for 2 weeks and treatment throughout the infection rescued from death of mice infected with Plasmodium yoelii XL-17 or P. berghei ANKA. In addition, survival was extended when the treatment started immediately after parasite inoculation. The ratio of lipid peroxidation products to parent lipids increased in plasma after 2 weeks treatment of probucol. This indicates that the protective effect of probucol might be mediated by the oxidative stressful environment induced by α-tocopherol deficiency. Probucol in combination with dihydroartemisin suppressed the proliferation of P. yoelii XL-17. These results indicated that probucol might be a candidate for a drug against malaria infection by inducing α-tocopherol deficiency without dietary α-tocopherol restriction.     

Association between delayed bedtime and sleep-related problems among community-dwelling 2-year-old children in Japan

Background

Although delayed sleep timing causes many socio-psycho-biological problems such as sleep loss, excessive daytime sleepiness, obesity, and impaired daytime neurocognitive performance in adults, there are insufficient data showing the clinical significance of a ‘night owl lifestyle’ in early life. This study examined the association between habitual delayed bedtime and sleep-related problems among community-dwelling 2-year-old children in Japan.

Methods

Parents/caregivers of 708 community-dwelling 2-year-old children in Nishitokyo City, Tokyo, participated in the study. The participants answered a questionnaire to evaluate their child’s sleep habits and sleep-related problems for the past 1 month.

Results

Of the 425 children for whom complete data were collected, 90 (21.2%) went to bed at 22:00 or later. Children with delayed bedtime showed significantly more irregular bedtime, delayed wake time, shorter total sleep time, and difficulty in initiating and terminating sleep. Although this relationship indicated the presence of sleep debt in children with delayed bedtime, sleep onset latency did not differ between children with earlier bedtime and those with delayed bedtime. Rather, delayed bedtime was significantly associated with bedtime resistance and problems in the morning even when adjusting for nighttime and daytime sleep time.

Conclusions

Even in 2-year-old children, delayed bedtime was associated with various sleep-related problems. The causal factors may include diminished homeostatic sleep drive due to prolonged daytime nap as well as diurnal preference (morning or night type) regulated by the biological clock.     

Intra-Arterial Transplantation of Allogeneic Mesenchymal Stem Cells Mounts Neuroprotective Effects in a Transient Ischemic Stroke Model in Rats: Analyses of Therapeutic Time Window and Its Mechanisms

Objective

Intra-arterial stem cell transplantation exerts neuroprotective effects for ischemic stroke. However, the optimal therapeutic time window and mechanisms have not been completely understood. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the timing of intra-arterial transplantation of allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in ischemic stroke model in rats and its efficacy in acute phase.

Methods

Adult male Wistar rats weighing 200 to 250g received right middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) for 90 minutes. MSCs (1×10⁶cells/ 1ml PBS) were intra-arterially injected at either 1, 6, 24, or 48 hours (1, 6, 24, 48h group) after MCAO. PBS (1ml) was intra-arterially injected to control rats at 1 hour after MCAO. Behavioral test was performed immediately after reperfusion, and at 3, 7 days after MCAO using the Modified Neurological Severity Score (mNSS). Rats were euthanized at 7 days after MCAO for evaluation of infarct volumes and the migration of MSCs. In order to explore potential mechanisms of action, the upregulation of neurotrophic factor and chemotactic cytokine (bFGF, SDF-1α) induced by cell transplantation was examined in another cohort of rats that received intra-arterial transplantation at 24 hours after recanalization then euthanized at 7 days after MCAO for protein assays.

Results

Behavioral test at 3 and 7 days after transplantation revealed that stroke rats in 24h group displayed the most robust significant improvements in mNSS compared to stroke rats in all other groups (p’s<0.05). Similarly, the infarct volumes of stroke rats in 24h group were much significantly decreased compared to those in all other groups (p’s<0.05). These observed behavioral and histological effects were accompanied by MSC survival and migration, with the highest number of integrated MSCs detected in the 24h group. Moreover, bFGF and SDF-1α levels of the infarcted cortex were highly elevated in the 24h group compared to control group (p’s<0.05).

Conclusions

These results suggest that intra-arterial allogeneic transplantation of MSCs provides post-stroke functional recovery and reduction of infarct volumes in ischemic stroke model of rats. The upregulation of bFGF and SDF-1α likely played a key mechanistic role in enabling MSC to afford functional effects in stroke. MSC transplantation at 24 hours after recanalization appears to be the optimal timing for ischemic stroke model, which should guide the design of clinical trials of cell transplantation for stroke patients.     

CDK inhibitors,p21 and p27, participate in cell cycle exit of mammalian cardiomyocytes

Mammalian cardiomyocytes actively proliferate during embryonic stages, following which cardiomyocytes exit their cell cycle after birth. The irreversible cell cycle exit inhibits cardiac regeneration by the proliferation of pre-existing cardiomyocytes. Exactly how the cell cycle exit occurs remains largely unknown. Previously, we showed that cyclin E- and cyclin A-CDK activities are inhibited before the CDKs levels decrease in postnatal stages. This result suggests that factors such as CDK inhibitors (CKIs) inhibit CDK activities, and contribute to the cell cycle exit. In the present study, we focused on a Cip/Kip family, which can inhibit cyclin E- and cyclin A-CDK activities. Expression of p21^Cip1 and p27^Kip1 but not p57^Kip2 showed a peak around postnatal day 5, when cyclin E- and cyclin A-CDK activities start to decrease. p21^Cip1 and p27^Kip1 bound to cyclin E, cyclin A and CDK2 at postnatal stages. Cell cycle distribution patterns of postnatal cardiomyocytes in p21^Cip1 and p27^Kip1 knockout mice showed failure in the cell cycle exit at G1-phase, and endoreplication. These results indicate that p21^Cip1 and p27^Kip play important roles in the cell cycle exit of postnatal cardiomyocytes.     

Induction of cell size vesicles from human lymphoma cell lines and their application to drug carriers

Sodium butyrate (NaB) induced the membrane enclosed cell size vesicles from several IgM producing cell lines. We considered the application of the cell-derived vesicles (CDVs) to drug delivery system (DDS) using the lung cancer specific IgM producing AE6 cell line. Microscopic observation showed that the DiI fluorescence labeled AE6 vesicles were incorporated into the lung cancer cell line A549. The anticancer drug, actinomycin D (actD), contained in AE6 and Ramos vesicles decreased the A549 cell viability to 46 and 62% of control without actD, respectively. The cytotoxic effect in AE6 vesicles was superior to that in the Ramos vesicles that have the lung cancer non-specific IgM on their surfaces. However, the result of the Ramos vesicles suggests that the surface molecules other than IgM may interact with the A549 cells. In our method for vesicle production, more specific and abundant antibodies mounted vesicles can be generated by transfection of their genes into cells followed by NaB treatment. These suggest that the CDVs may be useful for the development of a drug carrier for DDS.     

Schizosaccharomyces pombe Calmodulin, Cam1, Plays a Crucial Role in Sporulation by Recruiting and Stabilizing the Spindle Pole Body Components Responsible for Assembly of the Forespore Membrane

Calmodulin in Schizosaccharomyces pombe is encoded by the cam1⁺ gene, which is indispensable for both vegetative growth and sporulation. Here, we report how Cam1 functions in spore formation. We found that Cam1 preferentially localized to the spindle pole body (SPB) during meiosis and sporulation. Formation of the forespore membrane, a precursor of the plasma membrane in spores, was blocked in a missense cam1 mutant, which was viable but unable to sporulate. Three SPB proteins necessary for the onset of forespore membrane formation, Spo2, Spo13, and Spo15, were unable to localize to the SPB in the cam1 mutant although five core SPB components that were tested were present. Recruitment of Spo2 and Spo13 is known to require the presence of Spo15 in the SPB. Notably, Spo15 was unstable in the cam1 mutant, and as a result, SPB localization of Spo2 and Spo13 was lost. Overexpression of Spo15 partially alleviated the sporulation defect in the cam1 mutant. These results indicate that calmodulin plays an essential role in forespore membrane formation by stably maintaining Spo15, and thus Spo2 and Spo13, at the SPB in meiotic cells.Calmodulin is a calcium-binding protein that is ubiquitously distributed and highly conserved among eukaryotes. It contains four EF-hand Ca²⁺-binding sites, which are required for function. Calmodulin controls a variety of cellular processes mostly related to calcium signaling. When bound to calcium, calmodulin undergoes a characteristic conformational change to an active configuration. Activated calmodulin then binds effector proteins and transmits the signal to downstream regulators.Yeast is a genetically tractable model organism suitable for studying the biological function of calmodulin, using conditional-lethal calmodulin mutants (4). In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, calmodulin is encoded by the CMD1 gene (5). Cmd1p is implicated in a wide variety of cellular processes, including initiation of budding and mitotic spindle formation (24). The fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe has a typical calmodulin encoded by the cam1⁺ gene, which plays an indispensable role in cell proliferation, dependent on its Ca²⁺-binding activity (18, 19, 30). A green fluorescent protein (GFP)-Cam1 fusion protein localizes to sites of polarized cell growth and to the spindle pole body (SPB) in vegetative cells (19). Thus, an essential role of Cam1 might be its regulatory function in chromosome segregation (19). The role of calmodulin in the sexual cycle has been documented to a lesser extent in previous studies. A missense mutant, cam1-117, in which the Arg117 codon is changed to a Phe codon, exhibits reduced sporulation efficacy (29), suggesting that calmodulin plays a role in sporulation in fission yeast.Spore formation in fission yeast initiates with assembly of the forespore membrane (FSM), composed of double-unit membranes within the cytoplasm of a diploid zygote cell (10, 27, 28, 34). The FSM expands to encapsulate each haploid nucleus generated by meiosis and then forms a nucleated prespore. The inner bilayer of the FSM subsequently becomes the plasma membrane of the newborn spores. During meiosis II, the SPB undergoes morphological alteration from a compact single plaque to a multilayered expanded structure (10). Such modification of the SPB is a prerequisite for FSM assembly, which occurs close to the outermost layer of the modified SPB (9, 10, 20, 21).Three SPB component proteins, Spo2, Spo13, and Spo15, have been identified as essential for SPB modification and formation of the FSM (11, 23). Spo15, a large coiled-coil protein, is associated with the SPB throughout the life cycle and is indispensable for recruitment of Spo2 and Spo13 to the cytoplasmic surface of the meiotic SPB. The latter two proteins are produced only during meiosis (23). These observations imply that the SPB serves as a platform for assembly of the FSM. Cam1 has been reported to localize to the SPB during vegetative growth (19), raising the intriguing possibility that fission yeast calmodulin is involved in sporulation through proper construction of a modified meiotic SPB. To test this possibility, we report herein a detailed analysis of Cam1 localization during meiosis and the consequence of a missense mutation of cam1 on SPB modification and FSM formation.     

Dietary flavonoid apigenin is a potential inducer of intracellular oxidative stress: the role in the interruptive apoptotic signal

Apigenin is a representative dietary flavone (2-phenyl-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one) inhibiting cancer cell growth both in cell culture systems and in vivo. The prooxidant potential of apigenin was confirmed by the observations using flowcytometric and immunoblotting techniques that the intracellular accumulations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and protein carbonyls were detected in the cells treated with apigenin in a dose-dependent manner. Conversely, chrysin (5,7-dihydroxyflavone) did not show any prooxidant effect. A structure-activity relationship data thus indicated that a 4'-monohydroxyl group, which can be oxidized to semiquinone radical but not up to quinone-like metabolite, is essential for prooxidant effect. When HL-60 cells were treated with not only a heme synthesis inhibitor succinyl acetone (SA) but also myeloperoxidase (MPO) inhibitors, the ROS level enhanced by apigenin was significantly reduced. The gathered data suggested that peroxidase-catalyzed production of apigenin B-ring phenoxyl radicals might be responsible for the prooxidant effect. This is supported by the observation that MPO is able to catalyze production of apigenin phenoxyl radicals, detected by an electron spin resonance-spin trapping technique. We also reveal that both SA and alpha-tocopherol enhance cellular susceptibility to apoptosis-inducing stimuli by apigenin. In conclusion, the prooxidant effect of apigenin is likely to oxidize a variety of thiols through the formation of phenoxyl radicals and thus seems to play a significant role in the abortive apoptotic pathway switching to necrotic cell death.     

Geranylgeranyl diphosphate synthase in fission yeast is a heteromer of farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPS), Fps1, and an FPS-like protein, Spo9, essential for sporulation

Both farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPS) and geranylgeranyl diphosphate synthase (GGPS) are key enzymes in the synthesis of various isoprenoid-containing compounds and proteins. Here, we describe two novel Schizosaccharomyces pombe genes, fps1(+) and spo9(+), whose products are similar to FPS in primary structure, but whose functions differ from one another. Fps1 is essential for vegetative growth, whereas, a spo9 null mutant exhibits temperature-sensitive growth. Expression of fps1(+), but not spo9(+), suppresses the lethality of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae FPS-deficient mutant and also restores ubiquinone synthesis in an Escherichia coli ispA mutant, which lacks FPS activity, indicating that S. pombe Fps1 in fact functions as an FPS. In contrast to a typical FPS gene, no apparent GGPS homologues have been found in the S. pombe genome. Interestingly, although neither fps1(+) nor spo9(+) expression alone in E. coli confers clear GGPS activity, coexpression of both genes induces such activity. Moreover, the GGPS activity is significantly reduced in the spo9 mutant. In addition, the spo9 mutation perturbs the membrane association of a geranylgeranylated protein, but not that of a farnesylated protein. Yeast two-hybrid and coimmunoprecipitation analyses indicate that Fps1 and Spo9 physically interact. Thus, neither Fps1 nor Spo9 alone functions as a GGPS, but the two proteins together form a complex with GGPS activity. Because spo9 was originally identified as a sporulation-deficient mutant, we show here that expansion of the forespore membrane is severely inhibited in spo9Delta cells. Electron microscopy revealed significant accumulation membrane vesicles in spo9Delta cells. We suggest that lack of GGPS activity in a spo9 mutant results in impaired protein prenylation in certain proteins responsible for secretory function, thereby inhibiting forespore membrane formation.