Retinol plays a vital role in the immune response to infection, yet proteins that mediate retinol transport during infection have not been identified. Serum amyloid A (SAA) proteins are strongly induced in the liver by systemic infection and in the intestine by bacterial colonization, but their exact functions remain unclear. Here we show that mouse and human SAAs are retinol binding proteins. ...

Cellular retinol-binding proteins (CRBPs) I and II, which are members of the intracellular lipid-binding protein (iLBP) family, are retinoid chaperones that are responsible for the intracellular transport and delivery of both retinol and retinal. Although structures of retinol-bound CRBPI and CRBPII are known, no structure of a retinal-bound CRBP has been reported. In addition, the retinol-boun...

BACKGROUND Adipokines are elaborated by adipose tissue and are associated with glycemic, lipid, and vascular traits. We hypothesized that in a cross-sectional analysis circulating adipokines are altered among subsets of obesity stratified by presence versus absence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) and prospectively predict the incidence of MetS. METHODS AND RESULTS Participants in the community-b...

Retinol, bound non-specifically to serum proteins in organ culture medium, caused the degradation of the extracellular matrix of chick limb-bone rudiments. The loss of polymeric material was demonstrated histologically and measured chemically. Retinol, at the same concentration, bound specifically to retinol-binding protein, produced no significant effect. The addition of prealbumin to this sys...

Isolated pigment epithelial cells from bovine eyes were shown to be capable of taking up retinol and retinoic acid. The uptake was dependent on the ligands being presented to the cells as complexes with serum retinol-binding protein. Neither free retinol nor retinol or retinoic acid presented as serum albumin complexes were taken up by the pigment epithelial cells. The transport of retinal and ...

The acute inflammatory response to tissue injury and infection is associated with low concentrations of plasma retinol and its specific transport proteins, retinol-binding protein (RBP) and transthyretin (TTR). To examine the kinetics and mechanism of hyporetinemia, we have induced acute inflammation with lipopolysaccharide (LPS, from Pseudomonas aeruginosa) in rats with adequate stores of vita...

PURPOSE Interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein (IRBP) appears to target and protect retinoids during the visual cycle. X-ray crystallographic studies had noted a betabetaalpha-spiral fold shared with crotonases and C-terminal protein transferases. The shallow cleft formed by the fold was assumed to represent the retinol-binding site. However, a second hydrophobic site consisting of a highl...