Kinetic Studies on Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions: Oxidation of Glucose, Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide and Their Combination

The kinetics of the glucose oxidase-catalyzed reaction of glucose with O₂, which produces gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide, and the catalase-assisted breakdown of hydrogen peroxide to generate oxygen, have been measured via the rate of O₂ depletion or production. The O₂ concentrations in air-saturated phosphate-buffered salt solutions were monitored by measuring the decay of phosphorescence from a Pd phosphor in solution; the decay rate was obtained by fitting the tail of the phosphorescence intensity profile to an exponential. For glucose oxidation in the presence of glucose oxidase, the rate constant determined for the rate-limiting step was k = (3.0 ± 0.7) ×10⁴ M⁻¹s⁻¹ at 37°C. For catalase-catalyzed H₂O₂ breakdown, the reaction order in [H₂O₂] was somewhat greater than unity at 37°C and well above unity at 25°C, suggesting different temperature dependences of the rate constants for various steps in the reaction. The two reactions were combined in a single experiment: addition of glucose oxidase to glucose-rich cell-free media caused a rapid drop in [O₂], and subsequent addition of catalase caused [O₂] to rise and then decrease to zero. The best fit of [O₂] to a kinetic model is obtained with the rate constants for glucose oxidation and peroxide decomposition equal to 0.116 s⁻¹ and 0.090 s⁻¹ respectively. Cellular respiration in the presence of glucose was found to be three times as rapid as that in glucose-deprived cells. Added NaCN inhibited O₂ consumption completely, confirming that oxidation occurred in the cellular mitochondrial respiratory chain.     

烟草RAPD双引物与单引物PCR扩增多态性效率的比较分析

以两个亲缘关系较远的烟草（Nicotiana tabacum）品种台烟7号和白肋21为材料（GS=0.58）,研究了单引物扩增和双引物聚合扩增对RAPD-PCR分子标记多态性的影响。结果显示：双引物反应能够比单引物反应扩增出更多的多态性片段,双引物在白肋21和台烟7号中扩增出的多态性片段总数是单引物反应扩增出的多态性片段总数的6.6倍。因此,双引物RAPD的运用有助于提高烟草多态性分子标记的有效性。     

柿ξ-胡萝卜素脱氢酶基因的克隆与序列分析

通过对柿ζ-胡萝卜素脱氢酶(-ζCarotene desaturase,ZDS)基因的克隆及序列分析,旨在为改良柿果实品质奠定基础。根据GenBank中其他植物ZDS基因的保守序列设计了两条PCR扩增引物,以柿果实中所提取的RNA为模板,采用RACE技术扩增出一条约为500bp的条带。经过序列分析,其长578bp,不含内含子,具有部分开放阅读框(177bp)、终止密码子(TGA)和poly(A)尾巴(11bp),共编码58个氨基酸。该序列及其所编码的氨基酸与其他植物ζ-胡萝卜素脱氢酶基因均具有较高的同源性。该基因已提交GenBank数据库,登录号为GU075728。     

水牛MyD88cDNA的克隆与原核表达

采用RT-PCR方法从水牛外周血白细胞总RNA中扩增出髓样分化因子88 (mydoid differentiation factor 88,MyD88) cDNA序列,PCR产物分离纯化后,与pMD20-T载体连接,重组质粒经PCR、酶切鉴定后测序,并进行生物信息学分析;构建pET28a-MyD88表达载体,并将其转化至E.coli BL21 (DE3),经IPTG诱导表达后,进行SDS-PAGE、镍柱亲和层析纯化和Western blotting分析.结果显示,克隆到的水牛MyD88 cDNA全长为1 189 bp,含有1个891 bp的开放阅读框,编码296个氨基酸,理论等电点为5.65.经IPTG诱导表达后,得到一个带His·Tag的约39 kD的重组融合蛋白.用抗His单克隆抗体进行Western blotting,得到1条约39 kD特异性抗体结合带,表明水牛MyD88原核表达载体成功构建并表达.本研究为进一步开展水牛MyD88的结构功能分析奠定了基础.     

A role for Insulin-like growth factor 2 in specification of the fast skeletal muscle fibre

Background  

Fibre type specification is a poorly understood process beginning in embryogenesis in which skeletal muscle myotubes switch myosin-type to establish fast, slow and mixed fibre muscle groups with distinct function. Growth factors are required to establish slow fibres; it is unknown how fast twitch fibres are specified. Igf-2 is an embryonically expressed growth factor with established in vitro roles in skeletal muscle. Its localisation and role in embryonic muscle differentiation had not been established.     

Rab39, a novel Golgi-associated Rab GTPase from human dendritic cells involved in cellular endocytosis

Rab GTPases are Ras-like small molecular weight GTP binding proteins that are involved in various steps along the exocytic and endocytic pathways. Here we report that Rab39, a novel Rab protein, is a Golgi-associated protein involved in endocytosis of HeLa cells. Full-length cDNA of Rab39 contains 1251bp with an open reading frame (ORF) of 636bp, which is predicted to encode a 211 aa protein. By blast analysis of Rab39 cDNA and protein sequence with homologues, we find that Rab39 may be a short variant of Rab34. Rab39 contains conserved motifs involved in phosphate/guanosine binding and a microbody C-terminal targeting signal. RT-PCR analysis indicates that Rab39 is mainly detected in epithelial cell lines, and Northern blot analysis shows that Rab39 is expressed ubiquitously in human tissues. By using FITC-BSA as an endocytic tracer, we show that Rab39 can facilitate endocytosis in HeLa cells when expressed either transiently or stably. Confocal microscopy examination of Rab39 subcellular localization suggests that Rab39 is associated with Golgi-associated organelles. Our findings demonstrate that Rab39 is a novel Rab GTPase involved in cellular endocytosis.     

铁皮石斛腋芽的快速繁殖

目的利用组织培养技术建立铁皮石斛的高效快繁体系,克隆繁殖种苗,为野生居群的恢复提供材料。方法以铁皮石斛腋芽为外植体,研究不同浓度和配比的基本培养基、激素以及天然提取物对腋芽萌发生长,丛生芽的诱导增殖以及壮苗生根的影响,比较不同培养阶段的增殖倍数,筛选各时期的最适培养基。并对试管苗的形态学特征进行了调查。结果1/2MS+NAA 0.2 mg/L+BA 1 mg/L适合腋芽的成活生长。BA与香蕉汁组合有利于丛生芽的诱导增殖,其最适比例为1/2MS+NAA 0.5 mg/L+BA 2.0 mg/L+香蕉汁100 g/L,增殖倍数最大可达14.0,平均增殖倍数为6.4。培养基中添加100 g/L香蕉汁或200 g/L马铃薯汁均有利于壮苗生根。结论铁皮石斛通过腋芽形成丛生芽途径建立高效的快繁技术体系获得优质种苗是可行的。     

Cytokine-induced stable neuronal differentiation of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in a serum/feeder cell-free condition

The characteristics and multilineage differentiation potential of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM MSC) remain controversial. This study aimed to characterize human BM MSC isolated by plastic adherent or antibody selection and their neuronal differentiation potential using growth factors or chemical inducing agents. MSC were found to express low levels of neuronal markers: neurofilament-M, beta tubulin III, and neuron specific enolase. Under a serum- and feeder cell-free condition, basic fibroblast growth factor, epidermal growth factor, and platelet-derived growth factor induced neuronal morphology in MSC. In addition to the above markers, these cells expressed neurotransmitters or associated proteins: gamma-aminobutyric acid, tyrosine hydroxylase and serotonin. These changes were maintained for up to 3 months in all bone marrow specimens (N = 6). In contrast, butylated hydroxyanisole and dimethylsulfoxide were unable to induce sustained neuronal differentiation. Our results show that MSC isolated by two different procedures produced identical lineage differentiation with defined growth factors in a serum- and feeder cell-free condition.     

The bias introduced by population stratification in IBD based linkage analysis

The lack of replication of model-free linkage analyses performed on complex diseases raises questions about the robustness of these methods to various biases. The confounding effect of population stratification on a genetic association study has long been recognized in the genetic epidemiology community. Because the estimation of the number of alleles shared identical by descent (IBD) does not depend on the marker allele frequency when founders of families are observed, model-free linkage analysis is usually thought to be robust to population stratification. However, for common complex diseases, the genotypes of founders are often unobserved and therefore population stratification has the potential to impair model-free linkage analysis. Here, we demonstrate that, when some or all of the founder genotypes are missing, population stratification can introduce deleterious effects on various model-free linkage methods or designs. For an affected sib pair design, it can cause excess false-positive discoveries even when the trait distribution is homogeneous among subpopulations. After incorporating a control group of discordant sib pairs or for a quantitative trait, two circumstances must be met for population stratification to be a confounder: the distributions for both the marker and the trait must be heterogeneous among subpopulations. When this occurs, the bias can result in either a liberal, and hence invalid, test or a conservative test. Bias can be eliminated or alleviated by inclusion of founders' or other family members' genotype data. When this is not possible, new methods need to be developed to be robust to population stratification.     

2010年宜昌市铜绿假单胞菌的耐药性分析

了解宜昌市铜绿假单胞菌（Pseudomonas aeruginosa）临床分离株的耐药现状。宜昌市城区5所医院临床分离的铜绿假单胞菌菌株,用K-B法作药敏试验,并根据统计其耐药情况及耐药表型（模式）分析可能存在的耐药机制。临床分离的铜绿假单胞菌共1 575株,耐药率依次为阿米卡星7.1%、美罗培南17.2%、头孢吡肟20.4%、头孢哌酮/舒巴坦21.0%、哌拉西林/他唑巴坦22.5%、环丙沙星23.1%、庆大霉素23.4%、头孢他啶25.0%、亚胺培南25.2%、哌拉西林30.4%、氨曲南34.5%、复方新诺明59.0%、米诺环素75.6%。多重耐药（MDR）和泛耐药（PDR）株分别占41.5%和0.17%。对各种抗假单胞菌药物分别耐药的菌株仍有13%～25.7%对阿米卡星敏感,提示在严重铜绿假单胞菌感染患者的治疗中,β内酰胺类抗假单胞菌药加氨基糖苷类仍是一个很好的联合用药组合。细菌耐药性仍呈增长趋势,临床上感染多重耐药和泛耐药的铜绿假单胞菌的治疗仍很棘手,应合理使用抗生素,尽量延缓耐药菌株的出现。