Staphylococcus aureus aggregation in the plasma fraction of silkworm hemolymph

Staphylococcus aureus formed bacterial aggregates in the plasma fraction of the hemolymph of silkworm, the larva of Bombyx mori, in a growth-dependent manner. The addition of arabinose or galactose inhibited the formation of S. aureus aggregates in the silkworm plasma. Formation of the bacterial aggregates depended on S. aureus genes required for the synthesis of bacterial surface polysaccharides-ypfP and ltaA, which are involved in lipoteichoic acid synthesis, and the tagO gene, which is involved in wall teichoic acid synthesis. These findings suggest that S. aureus forms bacterial aggregates in the silkworm plasma via bacterial surface teichoic acids

ｶｲｺ体液中に存在する細胞増殖抑制ならびに脂肪蓄積促進活性因子に関する研究

ｶｲｺ(Bombyx mori)の幼虫体液中にはｶｲｺ由来培養細胞の増殖を抑制する活性があることを見出した｡また､ｶｲｺ体液によって増殖を阻害された細胞中には脂肪滴の形成が認められた｡本研究ではこれらの細胞増殖抑制および脂肪蓄積促進活性の実体となるｶｲｺ体液因子の解明を行った｡ｶｲｺ体液を出発材料として､細胞増殖抑制活性を指標にﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質の精製を行った｡6段階の精製過程の後､SDS-ﾎﾟﾘｱｸﾘﾙｱﾐﾄﾞｹﾞﾙ電気泳動において単一ﾊﾞﾝﾄﾞを示す画分を得た｡ｱﾐﾉ酸配列解析の結果､このﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質はｶｲｺ Niemann-Pick disease type C2(BmNPC2)ﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質であると同定された｡ﾘｺﾝﾋﾞﾅﾝﾄ BmNPC2 ﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質は細胞増殖抑制活性を示したことから BmNPC2 ﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質がｶｲｺ体液中の細胞増殖抑制活性の実体であることが示唆された｡さらに､ﾘｺﾝﾋﾞﾅﾝﾄ BmNPC2 ﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質をｶｲｺ培養細胞に添加することによって､細胞内ﾄﾘｸﾞﾘｾﾘﾄﾞ量の増大が認められた｡以上の結果は､BmNPC2 ﾀﾝﾊﾟｸ質がｶｲｺにおいて細胞増殖と脂質代謝を制御する体液性因子であることを示唆している｡Silkworm hemolymph induced both the cessation of growth and an increase in neutral lipids storage in the silkworm-derived cell line, BmN4. In this study, we identified a responsible blood factor showing growth-inhibitory and lipid-accumulating activity. We subjected the silkworm hemolymph to successive column chromatographies and measured the growth-inhibitory activity of each fraction. The final purified fraction showed the highest specific activity and a single band of 15kDa protein on SDS-PAGE. The amino acid sequence revealed that the 15kDa protein was Bombyx mori Niemann-Pick disease type C2 (BmNPC2) protein. A recombinant BmNPC2 protein exhibited growth-inhibitory activity comparable with the final purified fraction, indicating that this protein is responsible for the activitiy of silkworm hemolymph. Moreover, the recombinant BmNPC2 protein induced an increase in triglyceride storage in BmN4 cells. These results indicate that BmNPC2 protein regulates both cell growth and lipid metabolism in silkworm

Vertebrate Hedgehog signaling: cilia rule

The Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway differentially utilizes the primary cilium in mammals and fruit flies. Recent work, including a study in BMC Biology, demonstrates that Hh signals through the cilium in zebrafish, clarifying the evolution of Hh signal transduction

Phase II Clinical Trial for Newly Diagnosed Children and Adolescents with Localized Lymphoblastic Lymphoma (Japanese Leukemia/Lymphoma Study Group Trial LLB-NHL03) : Study Protocol for Nationwide Multicenter Trial

Pediatric patients with lymphoblastic lymphoma are generally treated using the Berlin-Frankfurt-Munster (BFM) 90 protocol, which is the standard treatment strategy for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and have a favorable outcome. However, this intense regimen includes high total doses of anthracycline and alkylating agents, and is known to cause late complications. We therefore planned a clinical trial to examine the efficacy and safety of a modified BFM regimen. We expect that this phase II, nationwide multicenter trial will help to establish an effective and safer standard therapy for stage I/II pediatric lymphoblastic lymphoma

Textpresso: An Ontology-Based Information Retrieval and Extraction System for Biological Literature

We have developed Textpresso, a new text-mining system for scientific literature whose capabilities go far beyond those of a simple keyword search engine. Textpresso's two major elements are a collection of the full text of scientific articles split into individual sentences, and the implementation of categories of terms for which a database of articles and individual sentences can be searched. The categories are classes of biological concepts (e.g., gene, allele, cell or cell group, phenotype, etc.) and classes that relate two objects (e.g., association, regulation, etc.) or describe one (e.g., biological process, etc.). Together they form a catalog of types of objects and concepts called an ontology. After this ontology is populated with terms, the whole corpus of articles and abstracts is marked up to identify terms of these categories. The current ontology comprises 33 categories of terms. A search engine enables the user to search for one or a combination of these tags and/or keywords within a sentence or document, and as the ontology allows word meaning to be queried, it is possible to formulate semantic queries. Full text access increases recall of biological data types from 45% to 95%. Extraction of particular biological facts, such as gene-gene interactions, can be accelerated significantly by ontologies, with Textpresso automatically performing nearly as well as expert curators to identify sentences; in searches for two uniquely named genes and an interaction term, the ontology confers a 3-fold increase of search efficiency. Textpresso currently focuses on Caenorhabditis elegans literature, with 3,800 full text articles and 16,000 abstracts. The lexicon of the ontology contains 14,500 entries, each of which includes all versions of a specific word or phrase, and it includes all categories of the Gene Ontology database. Textpresso is a useful curation tool, as well as search engine for researchers, and can readily be extended to other organism-specific corpora of text. Textpresso can be accessed at http://www.textpresso.org or via WormBase at http://www.wormbase.org