Oral administration of ovalbumin after sensitization attenuates symptoms in a mouse model of food allergic enteropathy

Oral immunotherapy (OIT) is a promising treatment of food allergy. To administer an appropriate oral dose of an allergenic component as OIT to individuals sensitized with a food allergen may prevent inducing food allergic inflammation in them. So we attempted to establish a mouse model to evaluate efficacy for oral administration of food allergen after sensitization. In BALB/c mice sensitized by injecting ovalbumin (OVA) with alum twice, OVA was administered before inducing inflammation by feeding the mice with egg white (EW) diet. Severe inflammatory responses, such as enteropathy, weight loss, IL-4 production, and increase of IgE antibody levels, were suppressed by administration with 4 mg of OVA 7 times before feeding EW diet. OVA administration alone induced a slight Th2 response, but no symptoms. The current study demonstrated that severe food allergic enteropathy could be prevented by pre-administration with appropriate dose of OVA to sensitized mice.     

CTP-dependent endogenous ADP-ribosylation of a 38 kDa protein in HL-60 cell membranes

Incubation of membranes of human promyelocytic leukemia HL-60 cells with [32P]NAD led to ADP-ribosylation of several proteins including a 38 kDa protein by endogenous ADP-ribosyltransferases. The ADP-ribosylation of the 38 kDa protein was distinctly different from others on the basis of pH dependency and heat stability at 50 degrees C, suggesting that there are at least two endogenous ADP-ribosyltransferases. It was enhanced by CTP, but not affected by ATP, GTP and UTP, whereas it was inhibited by GTP gamma S. [alpha-32P]CTP bound to the 38 kDa protein immobilized on a nitrocellulose sheet, indicating that the 38 kDa protein which bound CTP is strongly ADP-ribosylated by an endogenous ADP-ribosyltransferase.     

Primary structure of dihydrofolate reductase and mitochondrial ribosomal protein L36 genes from the basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus.

We amplified and sequenced the dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) gene of the basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus. Downstream of the DHFR coding region, a mitochondrial (mt) ribosomal protein L36 (RPL36) gene was discovered in the opposite orientation to DHFR gene. Putative polyadenylation signals of the two genes overlapped, both containing the 8-bp palindrome 5'-aatatatt-3'. The finding that C. cinereus DHFR gene is closely clustered with a mt protein gene strongly suggests that C. cinereus DHFR is closely related to mt function and evolution. The amino acid sequence of C. cinereus DHFR is most homologous to eukaryotic proteins such as Cryptococcus neoformans and Pneumocystis carinii DHFRs. However, the sequence of C. cinereus mt RPL36 closely resembles RPL36 of bacteria and cyanobacteria such as Synechocystis sp. and Escherichia coli. This result strongly supports the serial endosymbiotic theory of the development of ancestral eukaryotes, and suggests that C. cinereus mt RPL36 gene originated from the ancestral eubacterial genome.     

Intra- and Inter-Plant Level Correlations among Floral Traits in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Iris Gracilipes</Emphasis> (Iridaceae)

Although the sizes of individual flowers within one plant vary, few studies to date have investigated correlations among floral traits at the intra-plant level. Variations of the pleiotropic genes or linkage disequilibrium of genes, those have been said to create larger correlations between some combinations of traits than others at the inter-plant level, cannot predict intra-plant level correlations. In this study, correlations between several combinations of floral traits, including the number and volume of pollen grains and ovules, were investigated at both intra- and inter-plant levels in Iris gracilipes. The pattern of intra-plant level correlations was similar to that of inter-plant level correlations with some exceptions; correlations between functionally related traits tended to be larger than others at both levels. For example, correlations between sepal and petal size, and between petaloid style and filament length were large at both levels. This may be explained by the genetic and the developmental relationships between some combinations of traits, rather than by (co)variations of the peculiar properties of the individual plants such as genetic variations. Co-ordinat`ing editor: X. Pico     

A strain energy function for arteries accounting for wall composition and structure

Identification of a Strain Energy Function (SEF) is used when describing the complex mechanical properties of soft biological tissues such as the arterial wall. Classic SEFs, such as the one proposed by Chuong and Fung (J. Biomech. Eng. 105(3) (1983) 268), have been mostly phenomenological and neglect the particularities of the wall structure. A more structural model was proposed by Holzapfel et al. (J. Elasticity 61 (2000) 1-48.) when they included the characteristic angle at which the collagen fibers are helically wrapped, resulting in an excellent SEF for applications such as finite element modeling. We have expanded upon the idea of structural SEFs by including not only the wavy nature of the collagen but also the fraction of both elastin and collagen contained in the media, which can be determined by histology. The waviness of the collagen is assumed to be distributed log-logistically. In order to evaluate this novel SEF, we have used it to fit experimental data from inflation-extension tests performed on rat carotids. We have compared the results of the fit to the SEFs of Choung and Fung and Holzapfel et al. The novel SEF is found to behave similarly to that of Holzapfel et al., both succeed in describing the typical S-shaped pressure-radius curves with comparable quality of fit. The parameters of the novel SEF obtained from the fitting, bearing the physical meaning of the elastic modulus of collagen, the elastic modulus of elastin, the collagen waviness, and the collagen fiber angle, were compared to experimental data and discussed.     

Thermodynamical interpretation of evolutionary dynamics on a fitness landscape in a evolution reactor,I

A theory for describing evolution as adaptive walks by a finite population with M walkers (M ≥ 1) on an anisotropic Mt. Fuji-type fitness landscape is presented, from a thermodynamical point of view. Introducing the ‘free fitness’ as the sum of a fitness term and an entropy term and ‘evolutionary force’ as the gradient of free fitness on a fitness coordinate, we demonstrate that the behavior of these theoretical walkers is almost consistent with the thermodynamical schemes. The major conclusions are as follows: (1) an adaptive walk (=evolution) is driven by an evolutionary force in the direction in which free fitness increases; (2) the expectation of the climbing rate obeys an equation analogous to the Einstein relation in Brownian motion; (3) the standard deviation of the climbing rate is a quantity analogous to the mean thermal energy of a particle, kT (×constant). In addition, on the interpretation that the walkers climb the landscape by absorbing ‘fitness information’ from the surroundings, we succeeded in quantifying the fitness information and formulating a macroscopic scheme from an informational point of view.