Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Despite the first application of gene therapy in 1990, gene therapy has until recently failed to meet the huge expectations set forth by researchers, clinicians, and patients, thus dampening enthusiasm for an imminent cure for many life-threatening genetic diseases. Nonetheless, in recent years we have witnessed a strong comeback for gene therapy, ...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Autophagy is a conserved cellular process that acts as a key regulator in maintaining cellular homeostasis. Recent studies implicate an important role for autophagy in infection and immunity by removing invading pathogens and through modulating innate and adaptive immune responses. However, several pathogens, notably some positive-stranded RNA viru...
Published in Acta Biochimica et Biophysica Sinica
There is a worldwide epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes, two major public health concerns associated with alterations in both insulin and glucose signaling pathways. Glucose is not only an energy source but also controls the expression of key genes involved in energetic metabolism, through the glucose-signaling transcription factor, Carbohydra...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Systems biology holds the key for understanding biological systems on a system level. It eventually holds the key for the treatment and cure of complex diseases such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, mental disorders, and many others. The '-omics' technologies, such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabonomics, are among the major driving...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Hypothalamic histaminergic tuberomammillary (TM) neurons express nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) with kinetic and pharmacological properties resembling those of highly Ca(2+) permeable alpha7 nAChRs. However, the Ca(2+) permeability of TM nAChR channels has not been determined. To directly evaluate the Ca(2+) permeability of TM nAChRs, p...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Chemerin is a novel chemoattractant recognized by chemokine-like receptor 1 (CMKLR1), a serpentine receptor expressed primarily by plasmacytoid dendritic cells, natural killer cells, and macrophages. Human prochemerin circulates in plasma as an inactive precursor. Its chemotactic activity is expressed upon cleavage of the C-terminal amino acid resi...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta is a pleiotropic cytokine regulating a variety of cellular processes such as cell growth, differentiation, apoptosis, migration, cell adhesion, and immune response. In the well-understood classical TGF-beta signaling pathway, TGF-beta activates Smad signalling via its two cell surface receptors such as TbetaRII...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
A dimeric 50 kDa melibiose-binding lectin was isolated from the seeds of the cultivar of soybean (Glycine max), called the small glossy black soybean. The isolation procedure comprised ion exchange chromatography on Q Sepharose, SP Sepharose and Mono Q followed by gel filtration on Superdex 75. The lectin was adsorbed on all three ion exchangers, a...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
The mammalian proprotein convertase furin has been found to play an important role in diverse physiological and pathological events, such as the activation of viral glycoproteins and bacterial exotoxins. Small, non-toxic and highly active, furin inhibitors are considered to be attractive drug candidates for diseases caused by virus and bacteria. In...
Published in Acta biochimica et biophysica Sinica
Recombinant fusion protein is widely used as an antigen to raise antibodies against the epitope of a target protein. However, the concomitant anticarrier antibody in resulting antiserum reduces the production of the desired antibody and brings about unwanted non-specific immune reactions. It is proposed that the carrier protein transgenic animal co...
