新生牛肝中三种低分子化合物牛磺酸、鸟氨酸、肌肽对HL-60细胞凋亡的诱导作用

目的:研究三种新生牛肝源低分子化合物:牛磺酸、鸟氨酸、肌肽对HL-60白血病细胞增殖的抑制作用并探讨其调控机理.方法:用MTT法分别检测三种活性成分作用后HL-60细胞和正常人淋巴细胞的存活率.分别用琼脂糖凝胶电泳,顺磁共振ESR技术,免疫组化法测定其对HL-60细胞的核DNA、氧自由基活性和细胞周期蛋白水平的影响.结果:三种化合物能够有效地抑制HL-60细胞的增殖,而对正常的人淋巴细胞的生长没有抑制作用;三种化合物使HL-60细胞的核DNA产生30 kb片段,使HL-60细胞内的氧自由基活性降至痕量水平,并下调HL-60的p45/skp2的水平,而上调p27/kip的水平.结论:牛磺酸、鸟氨酸、肌肽能够通过调控细胞周期蛋白的水平而选择性的抑制肿瘤细胞的增殖.     

Profile-based string kernels for remote homology detection and motif extraction

We introduce novel profile-based string kernels for use with support vector machines (SVMs) for the problems of protein classification and remote homology detection. These kernels use probabilistic profiles, such as those produced by the PSI-BLAST algorithm, to define position-dependent mutation neighborhoods along protein sequences for inexact matching of k-length subsequences ("k-mers") in the data. By use of an efficient data structure, the kernels are fast to compute once the profiles have been obtained. For example, the time needed to run PSI-BLAST in order to build the profiles is significantly longer than both the kernel computation time and the SVM training time. We present remote homology detection experiments based on the SCOP database where we show that profile-based string kernels used with SVM classifiers strongly outperform all recently presented supervised SVM methods. We further examine how to incorporate predicted secondary structure information into the profile kernel to obtain a small but significant performance improvement. We also show how we can use the learned SVM classifier to extract "discriminative sequence motifs"--short regions of the original profile that contribute almost all the weight of the SVM classification score--and show that these discriminative motifs correspond to meaningful structural features in the protein data. The use of PSI-BLAST profiles can be seen as a semi-supervised learning technique, since PSI-BLAST leverages unlabeled data from a large sequence database to build more informative profiles. Recently presented "cluster kernels" give general semi-supervised methods for improving SVM protein classification performance. We show that our profile kernel results also outperform cluster kernels while providing much better scalability to large datasets.     

Recent advances in synthesis and surface modification of lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles for biomedical applications

Lanthanide (Ln)-doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) with appropriate surface modification can be used for a wide range of biomedical applications such as bio-detection, cancer therapy, bio-labeling, fluorescence imaging, magnetic resonance imaging and drug delivery. The upconversion phenomenon exhibited by Ln-doped UCNPs renders them tremendous advantages in biological applications over other types of fluorescent materials (e.g., organic dyes, fluorescent proteins, gold nanoparticles, quantum dots, and luminescent transition metal complexes) for: (i) enhanced tissue penetration depths achieved by near-infrared (NIR) excitation; (ii) improved stability against photobleaching, photoblinking and photochemical degradation; (iii) non-photodamaging to DNA/RNA due to lower excitation light energy; (iv) lower cytotoxicity; and (v) higher detection sensitivity. Ln-doped UCNPs are therefore attracting increasing attentions in recent years. In this review, we present recent advances in the synthesis of Ln-doped UCNPs and their surface modification, as well as their emerging applications in biomedicine. The future prospects of Ln-doped UCNPs for biomedical applications are also discussed.     

Pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine derivatives containing a Schiff base moiety as potential antiviral agents

A series of pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine derivatives containing a Schiff base moiety were synthesized, characterised, and evaluated for their activity against tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). Biological assays indicated that several of the derivatives exhibited significant activity against TMV. In particularly, compounds 5y and 5aa displayed excellent inactivating activity against TMV, with half maximal effective concentration (EC₅₀) values of 70.3 and 53.65?μg/mL, respectively, which were much better than that of ribavirin (150.45?μg/mL), and 5aa was superior to ningnanmycin (EC₅₀?=?55.35?μg/mL). Interactions of compounds 5y and 5aa with TMV coat protein (TMV-CP) were investigated using microscale thermophoresis and molecular docking. Compounds 5y and 5aa displayed strong binding capability to TMV-CP with dissociation constant (K_d) values of 22.6 and 9.8?μM, respectively. These findings indicate that pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine derivatives containing a Schiff base may be potential antiviral agents.     

Mitochondrial membrane potential regulates PINK1 import and proteolytic destabilization by PARL

PINK1 is a mitochondrial kinase mutated in some familial cases of Parkinson's disease. It has been found to work in the same pathway as the E3 ligase Parkin in the maintenance of flight muscles and dopaminergic neurons in Drosophila melanogaster and to recruit cytosolic Parkin to mitochondria to mediate mitophagy in mammalian cells. Although PINK1 has a predicted mitochondrial import sequence, its cellular and submitochondrial localization remains unclear in part because it is rapidly degraded. In this study, we report that the mitochondrial inner membrane rhomboid protease presenilin-associated rhomboid-like protein (PARL) mediates cleavage of PINK1 dependent on mitochondrial membrane potential. In the absence of PARL, the constitutive degradation of PINK1 is inhibited, stabilizing a 60-kD form inside mitochondria. When mitochondrial membrane potential is dissipated, PINK1 accumulates as a 63-kD full-length form on the outer mitochondrial membrane, where it can recruit Parkin to impaired mitochondria. Thus, differential localization to the inner and outer mitochondrial membranes appears to regulate PINK1 stability and function.     

小G蛋白在植物抗病性中的作用(英文)

小G蛋白一类是低分子量GTP结合蛋白,其分子量大约20～30 kDa。小G蛋白作为重要的分子开关参与了细胞许多重要生理信号途径的调控。近几年在植物中的研究、尤其是对模式植物水稻抗病分子机制的研究发现,Rho家族的小G蛋白在植物抗病信号传导途径的调控中起了关键的作用。本文对植物特有的Rho家族小G蛋白在植物免疫反应中的最新研究进展进行了综述。