Ethanol inhibits thrombin-induced secretion by human platelets at a site distinct from phospholipase C or protein kinase C.

Ethanol is known to inhibit the activation of platelets in response to several physiological agonists, but the mechanism of this action is unclear. The addition of physiologically relevant concentrations of ethanol (25-150 mM) to suspensions of washed human platelets resulted in the inhibition of thrombin-induced secretion of 5-hydroxy[14C]tryptamine. Indomethacin was included in the incubation buffer to prevent feedback amplification by arachidonic acid metabolites. Ethanol had no effect on the activation of phospholipase C by thrombin, as determined by the formation of inositol phosphates and the mobilization of intracellular Ca2+. Moreover, ethanol did not interfere with the thrombin-induced formation of diacylglycerol or phosphatidic acid. Stimulation of platelets with phorbol ester (5-50 nM) resulted in 5-hydroxy[14C]tryptamine release comparable with those with threshold doses of thrombin. However, ethanol did not inhibit phorbol-ester-induced secretion. Ethanol also did not interfere with thrombin- or phorbol-ester-induced phosphorylation of myosin light chain (20 kDa) or a 47 kDa protein, a known substrate for protein kinase C. By electron microscopy, ethanol had no effect on thrombin-induced shape change and pseudopod formation, but prevented granule centralization and fusion. The results indicate that ethanol does not inhibit platelet secretion by interfering with the activation of phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C or protein kinase C by thrombin. Rather, the data demonstrate an inhibition of a Ca2(+)-mediated event such as granule centralization.     

Autoantibody to the nucleosome subunit (H2A-H2B)-DNA is an early and ubiquitous feature of lupus-like conditions

Chromatin, a huge polymer of nucleosomes, has been implicated as an important target of autoantibodies in idiopathic and drug-induced lupus for decades, but the antigenicity of chromatin has only recently been dissected. IgG reactivity with the (H2A-H2B)-DNA complex, a subunit of the nucleosome, is present in the majority of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, in >90% of patients with lupus induced by procainamide and in individual patients with lupus induced by a variety of other drugs, but is not seen in people taking these medications who are clinically asymptomatic. Anti-[(H2A-H2B)-DNA] accounted for the bulk of the anti-chromatin activity in drug-induced lupus. The earliest detectable autoantibody in lupus-prone mice recognized similar epitopes in the (H2A-H2B)-DNA subnucleosome complex; as the immune response progressed, native DNA and other constituents of chromatin became antigenic. The importance of chromatin-reactive T cells in the anti-[(H2A-H2B)-DNA] response is suggested by the presence of somatic mutations in antibody V_H and V_L regions, their perdominant IgG isotype and the similarity in kinetics of their production to that of conventional T cell dependent antigens. Together with the serologic data from human lupus-like disease, these results are consistent with chromatin being a common stimulant for both B and T cells. While chromatin-reactive antibodies are closely associated with systemic disease and have recently been implicated in glomerulonephritis in SLE, the absence of renal disease in drug-induced lupus indicates that additional abnormalities are required to manifest the serious pathogenic potential of anti-[(H2A-H2B)-DNA] antibodies.Abbreviations APC antigen present cells - DIL drug-induced lupus - ELISA enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay - GBM glomerular basement membrane - [(H2A-H2B)-DNA] an intermolecular complex consisting of DNA and a dimer of histones H2A and H2B - nDNA native (double-stranded) DNA - SLE systemic lupus erythematosus     

Keratinocyte growth factor

Keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) is a member of the heparin-binding fibroblast growth factor family (FGF-7) with a distinctive pattern of target-cell specificity. Studies performed in cell culture suggested that KGF was mitogenically active only on epithelial cells, albeit from a variety of tissues. In contrast, KGF was produced solely by cells of mesenchymal origin, leading to the hypothesis that it might function as a paracrine mediator of mesenchymal-epithelial communication. Biochemical analysis and molecular cloning established that the KGF receptor (KGFR) was a tyrosine kinase isoform encoded by the fgfr-2 gene. Many detailed investigations of KGF and KGFR expression in whole tissue and cell lines largely substantiated the pattern initially perceived in vitro of mesenchymal and epithelial distribution, respectively. Moreover, functional assays in organ culture and in vivo and studies of KGF regulation by sex sterorid hormones reinforced the idea that KGF acts predominantly on epithelial cells to elicit a variety of responses including proliferation, migration and morphogenesis.     

Structure of REC2, a recombinational repair gene of Ustilago maydis, and its function in homologous recombination between plasmid and chromosomal sequences.

Mutation in the REC2 gene of Ustilago maydis leads to defects in DNA repair, recombination, and meiosis. Analysis of the primary sequence of the Rec2 protein reveals a region with significant homology to bacterial RecA protein and to the yeast recombination proteins Dmc1, Rad51, and Rad57. This homologous region in the U. maydis Rec2 protein was found to be functionally sensitive to mutation, lending support to the hypothesis that Rec2 has a functional RecA-like domain essential for activity in recombination and repair. Homologous recombination between plasmid and chromosomal DNA sequences is reduced substantially in the rec2 mutant following transformation. The frequency can be restored to a level approaching, but not exceeding, that observed in the wild-type strain if transformation is performed with cells containing multiple copies of REC2.     

Fluorescence dequenching kinetics of single cell-cell fusion complexes.

In an earlier paper which models the cell-cell (or virus-cell) fusion complex as two partial spherical vesicles joined at a narrow neck (Rubin, R. J., and Yi-der Chen. 1990. Biophys. J. 58:1157-1167), the redistribution by diffusion of lipid-like molecules through the neck between the two fused cell surfaces was studied. In this paper, we extend the study to the calculation of the kinetics of fluorescence increase in a single fusion complex when the lipid-like molecules are fluorescent and self-quenching. The formalism developed in this paper is useful in deducing fusion activation mechanisms from cuvette fluorescence measurements in cell-cell fusion systems. Two different procedures are presented: 1) an exact one which is based on the exact local density functions obtained from diffusion equations in our earlier study; and 2) an approximate one which is based on treating the kinetics of transfer of probes between the two fused cells as a two-state chemical reaction. For typical cell-cell fusion complexes, the fluorescence dequencing curves calculated from the exact and approximate procedures are very similar. Due to its simplicity, the approximate method should be very useful in future applications. The formalism is applied to a typical cell-cell fusion complex to study the sensitivity of dequenching curves to changes in various fusion parameters, such as the radii of the cells, the radius of the pore at the fusion junction, and the number of probes initially loaded to the complex.     

Maximal ecological diversity exceeds evolutionary diversity in model ecosystems

Understanding community saturation is fundamental to ecological theory. While investigations of the diversity of evolutionary stable states (ESSs) are widespread, the diversity of communities that have yet to reach an evolutionary endpoint is poorly understood. We use Lotka–Volterra dynamics and trait-based competition to compare the diversity of randomly assembled communities to the diversity of the ESS. We show that, with a large enough founding diversity (whether assembled at once or through sequential invasions), the number of long-time surviving species exceeds that of the ESS. However, the excessive founding diversity required to assemble a saturated community increases rapidly with the dimension of phenotype space. Additionally, traits present in communities resulting from random assembly are more clustered in phenotype space compared to random, although still markedly less ordered than the ESS. By combining theories of random assembly and ESSs we bring a new viewpoint to both the saturation and random assembly literature.     

A Genetic Analysis of the 63e-64a Genomic Region of Drosophila Melanogaster: Identification of Mutations in a Replication Factor C Subunit

We have performed and F(2) genetic screen to identify lethal mutations within the 63E-64A genomic region. We have isolated 122 mutations in 20 different complementation groups. Of these groups, 16 are represented by multiple alleles. We have also established that the Rop and Ras2 genes are located within the 63E-64A genomic domain at 64A10,11. We have sequenced 10.2 kb of DNA surrounding this gene pair and find that in addition to Rop and Ras2 there is another gene located within this DNA sequence. The gene product, which we have named Rfc40, shows 68% identity to the 40-kDa subunit of replication factor C. We find that the members of one complementation group (13 alleles) derived from our screen correspond to mutations in the Rop gene, whereas the members of another (five alleles) correspond to mutations in the Rfc40 gene. In addition we have isolated 11 new mutant alleles of the disembodied gene.