Ubiquitination, a highly versatile process of protein homeostasis, participates in the degradation vast majority cellular proteins. In addition to proteolytic function, ubiquitination can also conduce modulate processes independent proteolysis, such as signal transduction, trafficking, DNA repair and so on. Apoptosis modulates cell quantity via orderly removing damaged cells effectively plays f...

Tau aggregation is a hallmark of several neurodegenerative diseases, including AD (Alzheimer's disease), although the mechanism underlying tau aggregation remains unclear. Recent studies show that the proteolysis of tau plays an important role in both tau aggregation and neurodegeneration. On one hand, truncation of tau may generate amyloidogenic tau fragments that initiate the aggregation of t...

The lung usually is considered to be a passive tissue whose main function is to permit gaseous diffusion to and from the blood; however, the lung is also an organ of defense. Its phagocytes remove inhaled dust particles and bacteria. A considerable part of the lung parenchyma consists of mononuclear phagocytes and potential mononuclear phagocytes. Since these cells are not readily available in ...

Insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) have 6 types of binding proteins (IGFBPs), and IGFBP-3 is the major IGFBP in human sera. A proteolytic enzyme for IGFBP-3 has recently been reported to be present in human and animal pregnant sera. Although the physiological significance of a pregnancyassociated IGFBP-3 protease remains to be established, the proteolysis could result in lowering the affinity f...

Misregulation of the Wnt pathway is a common route to cancer, including primary breast cancers. In this issue of Genes & Development, Miranda-Carboni and colleagues (3121-3134) demonstrate that the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27(Kip1) is ubiquitylated for proteasomal degradation in Wnt10b-induced mammary tumors exclusively by the Cul4A E3 ligase, which is strongly induced by Wnt signalin...