Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, and the Lineberger Comprehensive 10 Cancer Center, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7292; 11 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Texas Medical Branch, 12 Galveston, TX 77555-7030, USA; Biochemical Pharmacology, Virology DBA, Roche Palo 13 Alto, 3431 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto, CA 943...

An article from Alan Hinnebusch's laboratory in the March 2013 issue of GENETICS establishes an exciting new link between proteins with well-established roles in the endomembrane system and the process of transcription elongation. This Primer article provides tools needed for students to fully appreciate, analyze, and critically evaluate the experiments and interpretations of Gaur et al. (2013)...

It is now generally accepted that Huntington's chorea is inherited through a single dominant autosomal gene but apart from this little is known of the aetiology. Earlier investigators had implicated endocrine factors (Mulon and Porak, 1912; Bize, 1934) but without very convincing evidence. With the advent ofnew drugs that had profound effects on the nervous system the idea of a neuronal basis f...

The cytoskeletal proteins talin and vinculin form part of a macromolecular complex on the cytoplasmic face of integrin-mediated cellular junctions with the extracellular matrix. Recent genetic, biochemical and structural data show that talin is essential for the assembly of such junctions, whereas vinculin appears to be important in regulating adhesion dynamics and cell migration.

Kinesin heavy chain (KHC), the force-generating component of Kinesin-1, is required for the localization of oskar mRNA and the anchoring of the nucleus in the Drosophila oocyte. These events are crucial for the establishment of the anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral axes. KHC is also essential for the localization of Dynein and for all ooplasmic flows. Interestingly, oocytes without Kinesin ...

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease of unknown cause. The immune response against citrullinated Ags has recently become the prime suspect for disease pathogenesis. Immunity against citrullinated Ags is thought to play a pivotal role in the disease for several reasons: 1) citrullinated Ags are expressed in the target organ, the inflamed joint; 2) anti-citrullinated ...

Cellular signal transduction pathways are usually studied following administration of an external stimulus. However, disease-associated aberrant activity of the pathway is often due to misregulation of the equilibrium state. The transcription factor NF-kappaB is typically described as being held inactive in the cytoplasm by binding its inhibitor, IkappaB, until an external stimulus triggers Ika...

Antibiotics methymycin (MTM) and pikromycin (PKM), co-produced by Streptomyces venezuelae, represent minimalist macrolide protein synthesis inhibitors. Unlike other macrolides, which carry several side chains, a single desosamine sugar is attached to the macrolactone ring of MTM and PKM. In addition, the macrolactone scaffold of MTM is smaller than in other macrolides. The unusual structure of ...

Some dinoflagellates possess the remarkable genetic, biochemical, and cellular machinery to produce bioluminescence. Bioluminescent species appear to be ubiquitous in surface waters globally and include numerous cosmopolitan and harmful taxa. Nevertheless, bioluminescence remains an enigmatic topic in biology, particularly with regard to the organisms' lifestyle. In this paper, we review the li...

In the recent years, a wealth of genetic, biochemical and structural data focusing on various steps of bacterial trans-translation was reported. The early events, from stalled ribosome recognition, pre-accommodation to translocation have been recently investigated in great details. In comparison, the later events including 'elongation-termination' onto tmRNA reading frame and ribosome recycling...