Cellular signaling is important for many biological processes including growth, differentiation, adhesion, motility and apoptosis. The protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) supergene family is the key mediator in cellular signaling in metazoans, directly associated with a variety of human diseases. All PTKs contain a highly conserved catalytic kinase domain, in spite of variable multi-domain structures...

For decades, molecular clocks have helped to illuminate the evolutionary timescale of life, but now genomic data pose a challenge for time estimation methods. It is unclear how to integrate data from many genes, each potentially evolving under a different model of substitution and at a different rate. Current methods can be grouped by the way the data are handled (genes considered separately or...

We recently demonstrated that C-CAM, an epithelial-cell adhesion molecule of the immunoglobulin supergene family, could be regulated by androgen and might act as a growth represser during differentiation of the prostatic epithelium. To define the role of ('-CAM in prostatic tumorigenesis, a tumorigenic human prostatic cancer cell line, PC-3, was transfected with an expression plasmiti containin...

CD1 is an MHC class I-like antigen-presenting molecule consisting of a heavy chain and beta(2)-microglobulin light chain. The in vitro refolding of synthetic MHC class I molecules has always required the presence of ligand. We report here the use of a folding method using an immobilized chaperone fragment, a protein disulphide isomerase, and a peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase (oxidative refo...

We recently demonstrated that C-CAM, an epithelial-cell adhesion molecule of the immunoglobulin supergene family, could be regulated by androgen and might act as a growth represser during differentiation of the prostatic epithelium. To define the role of ('-CAM in prostatic tumorigenesis, a tumorigenic human prostatic cancer cell line, PC-3, was transfected with an expression plasmiti containin...

Metamorphosis is a most dramatic example of hormonally regulated genetic reprogramming during postembryonic development. The initiation and sustenance of the process are under the control of ecdysteroids in invertebrates and thyroid hormone, 3,3', 5-triiodothyronine, in oviparous vertebrates. Their actions are inhibited or potentiated by other endogenous or exogenous hormones - juvenile hormone...

Evolutionary forces acting on genomes result in gene duplications, gene losses, and gene acquisitions. Generally, it is difficult to reconstruct the exact history of the evolutionary process because of its complex nature. A widely used approach is to find orthologous groups by comparing completely sequenced genomes. This approach resulted in several databases that helped predict protein functio...