Induction of protein kinase Czeta-related protein kinase by growth suppression in carcinogen-initiated epidermal cell-line WYF31 cells

In primary cultured mouse epidermal cells, protein kinase C isozyme zeta (PKCzeta) consists of multiple forms, for example, low-salt eluted PKCzeta (1-PKCzeta; 79 and 85 kDa) and high-salt eluted PKCzeta (h-PKCzeta; 79 and 85 kDa) on anion-exchange column chromatography. In this study, biochemical and biophysical differences between 1-PKCzeta and h-PKCzeta were examined by using carcinogen-initiated mouse epidermal cell-line WYF31 cells, whose growth is stimulated by tumour promoter phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA). The binding efficiency of h-PKCzeta to anti-PKCzeta antibody-affinity column was 10 times higher than that of 1-PKCzeta. T7-tagged rat PKCzeta overexpressed in WYF31 cells was recovered only in the high-salt eluted area on the anion-exchange column. Furthermore, when rat PKCzeta was stably overexpressed in WYF31 cells, the content of h-PKCzeta increased 4 to 5 times compared to that of parental cells, but the content of 1-PKCzeta was not altered. All of these results indicate that h-PKCzeta is the product of the PKCzeta gene (referred to as PKCzeta) and that 1-PKCzeta is closely related but different from PKCzeta (referred to as PKCzeta-related kinase). Interestingly, serum starvation of WYF31 cells caused a marked increase of the content of PKCzeta-related kinase with a concomitant decrease of PKCzeta content. These changes were reversed by stimulating the cell growth with 10% foetal calf serum. Prolonged treatment of starved cells with PMA, which induces the proliferation of WYF31 cells, also caused the downregulation of PKCzeta-related kinase. These results suggest that the expression levels of PKCzeta-related kinase and PKCzeta are differently regulated, and that the increased expression of PKCzeta-related kinase might play a significant role in the growth-suppression processes of WYF31 cells.     

药用植物栀子的组织培养

栀子(Gardenia jasminoides)为药用木本植物。以栀子果皮、种子团和种子为外植体,研究不同激素配比及不同培养方式对愈伤组织诱导和芽分化的影响。研究结果表明,培养基成分为MS+0.5 mg·L–12,4-D+0.25 mg·L–16-BA较适宜果皮和种子愈伤组织的诱导,诱导率分别为83.3%和88.5%;培养基成分为MS+1.0 mg·L–12,4-D+1.0 mg·L–16-BA较适宜种子团愈伤组织的诱导,诱导率为78.1%。3种外植体诱导的愈伤组织中,只有种子愈伤组织能通过液体培养分化出芽;TDZ对芽分化有明显的促进作用;最佳的芽分化培养基为MS+0.05 mg·L–1NAA+0.10 mg·L–1TDZ,其愈伤组织分化率为8.75%。该研究以栀子种子为外植体,并获得了再生植株,为药用植物栀子转基因体系的建立奠定了基础。     

Expression of a novel <Emphasis Type="Italic">OSPGYRP</Emphasis> (rice proline-, glycine- and tyrosine-rich protein) gene,which is involved in vesicle trafficking,enhanced cold tolerance in <Emphasis Type="Italic">E. coli</Emphasis>

A novel OSPGYRP gene encoding a rice proline-, glycine- and tyrosine-rich protein was isolated from cold-stress treated rice seedlings using suppression subtractive hybridization. Both amino acid sequence analysis and subcellular localization confirm that OsPGYRP is a novel protein involved in vesicle trafficking. The expression of the OSPGYRP gene was induced by cold, salt, and osmotic stress. In addition, expression of the OSPGYRP gene in E. coli increased the resistance to cold stress. These results show that OsPGYRP is a novel protein involved in vesicle trafficking and plays an important role in plant adaptation to stress. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Independence of stem and leaf hydraulic traits in six Euphorbiaceae tree species with contrasting leaf phenology

Hydraulic traits and hydraulic-related structural properties were examined in three deciduous (Hevea brasiliensis, Macaranga denticulate, and Bischofia javanica) and three evergreen (Drypetes indica, Aleurites moluccana, and Codiaeum variegatum) Euphorbiaceae tree species from a seasonally tropical forest in south-western China. Xylem water potential at 50% loss of stem hydraulic conductivity (P50_stem) was more negative in the evergreen tree, but leaf water potential at 50% loss of leaf hydraulic conductivity (P50_leaf) did not function as P50_stem did. Furthermore, P50_stem was more negative than P50_leaf in the evergreen tree; contrarily, this pattern was not observed in the deciduous tree. Leaf hydraulic conductivity overlapped considerably, but stem hydraulic conductivity diverged between the evergreen and deciduous tree. Correspondingly, structural properties of leaves overlapped substantially; however, structural properties of stem diverged markedly. Consequently, leaf and stem hydraulic traits were closely correlated with leaf and stem structural properties, respectively. Additionally, stem hydraulic efficiency was significantly correlated with stem hydraulic resistance to embolism; nevertheless, such a hydraulic pattern was not found in leaf hydraulics. Thus, these results suggest: (1) that the evergreen and deciduous tree mainly diverge in stem hydraulics, but not in leaf hydraulics, (2) that regardless of leaf or stem, their hydraulic traits result primarily from structural properties, and not from leaf phenology, (3) that leaves are more vulnerable to drought-induced embolism than stem in the evergreen tree, but not always in the deciduous tree and (4) that there exists a trade-off between hydraulic efficiency and safety for stem hydraulics, but not for leaf hydraulics.     

Differential ConA-enriched urinary proteome in rat experimental glomerular diseases

Glomerular diseases are leading causes of end-stage renal diseases worldwide. They are considered to be consequences of injury primarily to the three types of glomerular cells. Differential diagnosis typically relies on invasive biopsy findings. We expected that injuries of different glomerular cells would cause different changes in urinary proteome. The goal of this study was to identify differential urinary proteins distinguishing between injuries of different glomerular cells before significant histopathologic changes. Adriamycin nephropathy and Thy1.1 glomerulonephritis were employed as models with different primary impaired cells. ConA-enriched urinary glycoproteome on day3 were profiled by gel-free shotgun tandem mass spectrometry, and compared with self-healthy controls to identify differential urinary proteins for each model. By comparing the changes of the differential proteins between these two models, we identified 39 proteins with different directions of changes, which may potentially be useful in differentiation; and 7 proteins with the same direction of changes, which may be potential indicators of early renal damage. These differential proteins were of several origins: plasma proteins, proteins with urine or kidney specificity, proteins without tissue-specificity (mainly inflammatory mediators) etc. Our results may help better understand the effects of injuries of different glomerular cells at the initial stage, and lead to the discovery of novel early diagnostic markers for human focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and mesangioproliferative glomerulonephritis (MsPGN) which have the same primary impaired cells with adriamycin nephropathy and Thy1.1 glomerulonephritis, respectively.     

Predicting protein fold types by the general form of Chou's pseudo amino acid composition: approached from optimal feature extractions

Identification on protein folding types is always based on the 27-class folds dataset, which was provided by Ding & Dubchak in 2001. But with the avalanche of protein sequences, fold data is also expanding, so it will be the inevitable trend to improve the existing dataset and expand more folding types. In this paper, we construct a multi-class protein fold dataset, which contains 3,457 protein chains with sequence identity below 35% and could be classified into 76 fold types. It was 4 times larger than Ding & Dubchak's dataset. Furthermore, our work proposes a novel approach of support vector machine based on optimal features. By combining motif frequency, low-frequency power spectral density, amino acid composition, the predicted secondary structure and the values of auto-correlation function as feature parameters set, the method adopts criterion of the maximum correlation and the minimum redundancy to filter these features and obtain a 95-dimensions optimal feature subset. Based on the ensemble classification strategy, with 95-dimensions optimal feature as input parameters of support vector machine, we identify the 76-class protein folds and overall accuracy measures up to 44.92% by independent test. In addition, this method has been further used to identify upgraded 27-class protein folds, overall accuracy achieves 66.56%. At last, we also test our method on Ding & Dubchak's 27-class folds dataset and obtained better identification results than most of the previous reported results.     

Differentiating the 2,3-diols of glucopyranosides by 4,6-O-benzylidene-protected-1,2-d-glucopyranosylorthoesters strategy

A facile and efficient method to differentiate the 2,3-diols of glucopyranosides based on 1,2-orthoesters strategy was developed. Stable thioglucosides were employed as the starting materials to prepare the corresponding 1,2-orthoesters. When treated with HCl aqueous solution and followed with Et₃N, differentiation of the 2,3-diols was efficiently achieved along with the generation of a convertible anomeric hydroxyl group. In addition, an easy and practical method based on NOE was proposed to determine whether the 1,2-orthoesters were endo-type or exo-type.     

Subcellular localization of EGFR in esophageal carcinoma cell lines

Background: The EGF receptor is a therapeutic target in cancer cells, whereby mutations of EGFR and/or signalling members act as predictive markers. EGFR however also exhibits dynamic changes of subcellular localization, leading to STAT5 complex formation, nuclear translocation and induction of Aurora-A expression in squamous cancer cells. We previously described high EGFR and Aurora-A expression in esophageal cancer cells. Here, we investigated subcellular localization of EGFR and STAT5 in esophageal cancer cells. Results: Quantitative immunofluorescence analyses of four esophageal cancer cell lines reflecting esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCC) and esophageal adenocarcinomas (EAC) revealed that the subcellular localization of EGFR was shifted from a membranous to cytoplasmic localization upon EGF-stimulation in OE21 (ESCC) cells. Thereby, EGFR in part co-localized with E-Cadherin. In parallel, phosphorylated STAT5-Tyr694 appeared to increase in the nucleus and to decrease at the cell membrane. In three additional cell lines, EGFR was only marginally (Kyse-410/ESCC; OE19/EAC) and weakly (OE33, EAC) detectable at the cell membrane. Partial co-localization of EGFR and E-Cadherin occurred in OE33 cells. Post EGF-stimulation, EGFR was detected in the cytoplasm, resembling endosomal compartments. Furthermore, OE19 and OE33 exhibited nuclear STAT5-Tyr694 phosphorylation upon EGF-stimulation. None of the four cell lines showed nuclear EGFR expression and localization. Conclusion: In contrast to other (squamous) cancer cells, activation of EGFR in esophageal squamous cancer cells does not result in nuclear translocation of EGFR. Still, the subcellular localization of EGFR may influence STAT5-associated signaling pathways in esophageal cancer cells and hence possibly also the responses to ErbB, respective EGFR-targeted therapies.