THE USE OF SILICONES IN DERMATOLOGY

A cosmetically acceptable lotion containing a silicone protectant, a keratolytic, a bacteriocidal agent and antipruritic substances, was clinically tested in 208 persons with various dermatoses.Twenty-four-hour closed patch tests on humans and intradermal tests in laboratory animals indicate the lotion not to be a sensitizer.Subacute and chronic housewives'' eczema and contact dermatitis of the hands, uncomplicated “diaper rash,” periaural dermatitis due to excessive moisture, and certain hyperkeratotic dermatoses responded satisfactorily to the use of the lotion.     

PROMOT: a FORTRAN program to scan protein sequences against a library of known motifs

Information about the three-dimensional structure or functionof a newly determined protein sequence can be obtained if theprotein is found to contain a characterized motif or patternof residues. Recently a database (PROSITE) has been establishedthat contains 337 known motifs encoded as a list of allowedresidue types at specific positions along the sequence. PROMOTis a FORTRAN computer program that takes a protein sequenceand examines if it contains any of the motifs in PROSITE. Theprogram also extends the definitions of patterns beyond thoseused in PROSITE to provide a simple, yet flexible, method toscan either a PROSITE or a user-defined pattern against a proteinsequence database. Received on October 17, 1990; accepted on November 15, 1990     

Ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal peptides. Substrates for ubiquitin activating enzyme

The carboxyl terminus of ubiquitin is activated in the presence of ATP to enter the ubiquitin cycle in cells. Peptides corresponding to the COOH-terminal region of ubiquitin were synthesized to investigate their effects on the ATP/ubiquitin-dependent proteolytic pathway. Their activities in the PPi exchange assay with ubiquitin activating enzyme (E1) were proportional to their length. The hexapeptide Ac-Leu-Arg-Leu-Arg-Gly-Gly reacted with ATP to form an enzyme-adenylate-hexapeptide complex and at high concentrations was 20-25% as active as human ubiquitin in the PPi exchange assay with E1. However, the hexapeptide was not transferred to the sulfhydryl "thiol" site on E1. In addition, the COOH-terminal peptides did not support the degradation of 125I-bovine serum albumin in the reticulocyte lysate system. A nonhomologous peptide of equivalent length was inactive in all assays. Thus, synthetic COOH-terminal peptide(s) of ubiquitin can partially substitute for ubiquitin in its reactions with E1 but do not support subsequent steps of the energy-dependent proteolytic pathway. These results show that it may be possible to design small molecules that either serve as substrates or inhibitors for other specific steps in ubiquitin-dependent pathways.     

Alteration in sialidase and other glycosidase activities in the kidney of spontaneously hypertensive rats: persistence after preventive treatment with hydralazine

Because kidney microangiopathy with capillary basement membrane thickening has been reported in spontaneous hypertension, we have studied the activities of three lysosomal glycosidases able to degrade the carbohydrate moieties of basement membrane constituents in the kidney cortex of 12-week-old spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and age-matched normotensive Wistar Kyoto rats (WKY). These activities were also determined in SHR and WKY treated from 6 to 12 weeks of age with hydralazine (mean dose, 18 mg/kg per day in drinking water). Sialidase specific activity on sialyl-alpha 2-3-[3H]lactitol was markedly decreased in the kidney of untreated SHR, 40% activity remaining relative to that found in untreated age-matched WKY (p less than 0.001). beta-Galactosidase specific activity on p-nitrophenyl-beta-D-galactoside was also decreased, 86% activity remaining relative to that found in untreated WKY (p less than 0.001). Glucosyl-galactosyl-hydroxylysyl glucohydrolase specific activity on glucosyl-galactosyl-hydroxylysine was equally diminished, 74% activity remaining relative to that found in untreated age-matched WKY (p less than 0.001). In contrast, the activities of two control glycosidases inactive on the carbohydrate moieties of basement membrane constituents, alpha-glucosidase assayed with p-nitrophenyl-alpha-D-glucoside as substrate and beta-glucosidase assayed with p-nitrophenyl-beta-D-glucoside as substrate, were significantly increased. All the alterations in enzyme activities observed in the kidney of SHR were also present in the long-term treated normotensive SHR. No effect of the hydralazine treatment on the three enzyme activities investigated could be demonstrated in the WKY. Thus the alterations observed in the kidneys of SHR appear to be independent of blood pressure level.     

lin-17 mutations of Caenorhabditis elegans disrupt certain asymmetric cell divisions

The identification of a gene necessary for the asymmetry of cell division would be an important first step toward understanding how sister cells come to differ in their developmental fates. The lin-17 gene of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is an excellent candidate for being such a gene. lin-17 mutations cause several blast cells that normally generate sister cells of two distinct types to generate instead sister cells of the same type. Moreover, lin-17 mutations cause sister cells to be equal in size as well as equivalent in developmental fate, suggesting that lin-17 acts at or prior to the asymmetric cell division. The lin-17 gene product is involved in asymmetric cell divisions in a variety of tissues, indicating that lin-17 functions in a general mechanism for the establishment of cellular asymmetry in parent cells.     

A relational database of protein structures designed for flexible enquiries about conformation

A relational database of protein structure has been developed to enable rapid and flexible enquiries about the occurrence of many aspects of protein architecture. The coordinates of 294 proteins from the Brookhaven Data Bank have been processed by standard computer programs to generate many additional terms that quantify aspects of protein structure. These terms include solvent accessibility, main-chain and side-chain dihedral angles, and secondary structure. In a relational database, the information is stored in tables with columns holding the different terms and rows holding the different entries for the terms. The different relational base tables store the information about the protein coordinate set, the different chains in the protein, the amino acid residues and ligands, the atomic coordinates, the salt bridges, the hydrogen bonds, the disulphide bridges and the close tertiary contacts. The database was established under ORACLE management system. Enquiries are constructed in ORACLE using SQL (structured query language) which is simple to use and alleviates the need for extensive computer programs. A single table can be searched for entries that meet various criteria, e.g. all protein solved to better than a given resolution. The power of the database occurs when several tables, or the entries in a single table, are cross-correlated. For example the dihedral angles of proline in the fourth position in an alpha-helix in high resolution structures can be rapidly obtained. The structural database provides a powerful tool to obtain empirical rules about protein conformation. This database of protein structures is part of a joint project between Birkbeck College and Leeds University to establish an integrated data resource of protein sequences and structures (ISIS) that encodes the complex patterns of residues and coordinates that define protein conformation. The entire data resource (ISIS) will provide a system to guide all areas of protein modelling including structure prediction, site-directed mutagenesis and de novo protein design. The availability of ISIS is described in the paper.     

Isotope ratios of cellulose from plants having different photosynthetic pathways

Hydrogen and carbon isotope ratios of cellulose nitrate and oxygen isotope ratios of cellulose from C₃, C₄, and Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) plants were determined for plants growing within a small area in Val Verde County, Texas. Plants having CAM had distinctly higher deuterium/hydrogen (D/H) ratios than plants having C₃ and C₄ metabolism. When hydrogen isotope ratios are plotted against carbon isotope ratios, each photosynthetic mode separates into a distinct cluster of points. C₄ plants had many D/H ratios similar to those of C₃ plants, so that hydrogen isotope ratios cannot be used to distinguish between these two photosynthetic modes. Portulaca mundula, which may have a modified photosynthetic mode between C₄ and CAM, had a hydrogen isotope ratio between those of the C₄ and CAM plants. When oxygen isotope ratios are plotted against carbon isotope ratios, no distinct clustering of the C₄ and CAM plants occurs. Thus, oxygen isotope ratios are not useful in distinguishing between these metabolic modes. A plot of hydrogen isotope ratios versus oxygen isotope ratios for this sample set shows considerable overlap between oxygen isotope ratios of the different photosynthetic modes without a concomitant overlap in the hydrogen isotope ratios of CAM and the other two photosynthetic modes. This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that higher D/H ratios in CAM plants relative to C₃ and C₄ plants are due to isotopic fractionations occurring during biochemical reactions.     

Tannins and nitrogen dynamics in mangrove leaves at different age and decay stages (Jiulong River Estuary,China)

Changes in the total phenolics, condensed tannins (CT), protein-precipitable phenolics content and protein precipitation capacity were determined on mangrove leaves representing a range of maturation and senescence in the Jiulong River Estuary, Fujian, China. The results showed that the total phenolics, extractable condensed tannins, total condensed tannins, protein-precipitable phenolics content and protein precipitation capacity in young leaves were higher than those in mature and senescent leaves. With leaf maturation and senescence, total pehnolics decreased. The rapid loss of phenolics observed following senescence and abscission can be ascribed to leaching and degradation. Protein-bound CT and fibre-bound CT tended to increase with leaf maturity, and decreased with senescence. Protein-bound CT and fibre-bound CT increased with leaf decomposition, with CT binding more strongly to protein than to fibre. The increases in nitrogen contents and ash free caloric values, and declines in total phenolics and total condensed tannins of mangrove leaf litter suggests that partially decomposed mangrove detritus is a palatable heterotrophic substrate, and thus may be an important source of matter and energy for the estuarine food web. Handling editor: K. Martens     

Automatic document classification of biological literature

Background  

Document classification is a wide-spread problem with many applications, from organizing search engine snippets to spam filtering. We previously described Textpresso, a text-mining system for biological literature, which marks up full text according to a shallow ontology that includes terms of biological interest. This project investigates document classification in the context of biological literature, making use of the Textpresso markup of a corpus of Caenorhabditis elegans literature.     

Inter-species sequence conservation of single-spanning transmembrane regions

The extent of inter-species sequence identity in single-spanning transmembrane regions of integral membrane proteins was evaluated. The sequences of the 32 human transmembrane regions were compared with the respective rodent homologues. The identity between homologous transmembrane regions ranged from 32 to 100%, compared with a mean value of 14% identity between unrelated transmembrane sections. On average the identity between homologous transmembrane regions is slightly higher than for the rest of the chain. These values suggest that, in general, there are structural and/or functional constraints on the transmembrane regions beyond the simple requirement to act as a passive, nonpolar, connecting region across the cell membrane. Although there is limited experimental evidence available, the three transmembrane regions (CD2 antigen, MHC class I and ICAM-1) with particularly low values of inter-species identity (less than 50%) are probably not involved in an interaction with another transmembrane section in the same cell.