大肠杆菌中转录-翻译耦合的机制

在大肠杆菌（Escherichia coli,E. coli）等原核生物中,转录和翻译往往是耦合的,这种耦合通常表现在转录和翻译的互相调控上,如转录极性、转录衰减和转录-翻译速率的同步。间接耦合和物理耦合是耦合的两种模式。由警报素（alarmone）(p)ppGpp维持的间接耦合可能需要DksA和TufA蛋白的辅助。物理耦合分为NusG或RfaH因子介导的耦合和非因子条件下产生的“碰撞”耦合。响应于压力的转录或翻译的变化会引发几种耦合模式间的相互转变。耦合对于基因正常表达是必要的,其解除将引发转录终止、R环形成、复制-转录冲突、mRNA切割等不利的事件。结构生物学的相关技术已经清晰地展示了部分耦合的表达体（expressome）的结构细节和特征,这些技术联合多组学分析等方法将提供关于耦合的更深层次的见解。重要的是,对耦合的研究或许会为靶向抗菌药物的开发带来新的思路。     

Scarless integumentary wound healing in the mammalian fetus: Molecular basis and therapeutic implications

Adult mammals respond to injury of their skin/integument by forming scar tissue. Scar is useful in rapidly sealing an injured area, but can also lead to significant morbidity. Mammals in fetal life retain the ability to heal integumentary wounds regeneratively, without scar. The critical molecular mechanisms governing this remarkable phenomenon have been a subject of great interest, in the hopes that these could be dissected and recapitulated in the healing adult wound, with the goal of inducing scarless healing in injured patients. Multiple lines of investigation spanning decades have implicated a number of factors in distinguishing scarless from fibrotic wound healing, including most prominently transforming growth factor‐β and interleukin‐10, among others. Therapeutic interventions to try to mitigate scarring in adult wounds have been developed out of these studies, and have reached the level of clinical trials in humans, although as yet no FDA‐approved treatment exists. More recent expressomic studies have revealed many more genes that are differentially expressed in scarlessly healing fetal wounds compared with adult, and microRNAs have also been identified as participating in the fetal wound healing response. These represent an even greater range of potential therapeutics (or targets for therapy) to translate the promise of scarless fetal wound healing to the injured adult patient. Birth Defects Research (Part C) 96:223–236, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.