Immungenetische Untersuchungen zur Assoziation des Einzelnukleotidpolymorphismus -670 A/G im Promotor des Rezeptorgens Fas/CD95 und Lupus erythematodes

Die Krankheitsentität Lupus erythematodes in ihren verschiedenen Unterformen beschreibt eine autoimmunologische Systemerkrankung der Haut und des Gefäßbindegewebes. Für ihre Ätiopathogenese scheinen bestimmte Umweltfaktoren wie Infektionen, Medikamente, Chemikalien oder UV-Strahlung verantwortlich zu sein, die im Zusammenspiel mit einer gleichzeitig vorhandenen genetischen Disposition eine Veränderung in der Regulation der Immunantwort bewirken. Die daraus resultierende Störung der Selbst- und Fremderkennung äußert sich in einer überschießenden Produktion von Autoantikörpern, nicht-organspezifischen Komplementbindungsreaktionen und einer verminderten zellulären Immunität. Endgültig sind die Entstehungsmechanismen, die letztlich zu einem Verlust der Selbsttoleranz führen, in ihrer Komplexität bisher nicht aufgeklärt. Für die genetische Prädisposition zur Entwicklung einer Autoimmunreaktion scheinen verschiedene Kandidatengene von besonderer Bedeutung zu sein. Um die Vermutung zu bestätigen, dass eine Fehlfunktion der Apoptose maßgeblich an der Ätiopathogenese des Lupus erythematodes beteiligt ist, versucht die aktuelle Forschung, einen direkten Zusammenhang der Apoptose-induzierenden Gene, wie Fas, FasL, bcl-2 und DNAse1 mit einer gesteigerten Suszeptibilität für Autoimmunerkrankungen nachzuweisen. Inwieweit immungenetische Variationen auf Einzelnukleotidebene die unterschiedlichen Ausprägungsformen einer Autoimmunreaktion beeinflussen können und sich im klinischen Bild einer Erkrankung widerspiegeln, ist dabei von besonderem Interesse. Ziel dieser Arbeit war, aus der Untersuchung eines funktionellen Einzelnukleotidpolymorphismus in der Promotorregion des Gens für den Fas-Rezeptor abzuleiten, ob eine Assoziation zwischen dem programmierten Zelltod und der Krankheit Lupus erythematodes in ihren Subtypen besteht. Die Suche nach Hinweisen auf einen Zusammenhang mit einer gesteigerten Lichtempfindlichkeit sowie einem bestimmten Autoantikörperprofil im Serum sollte dabei im Mittelpunkt stehen. Der Bildung von Autoantikörpern beim Lupus erythematodes scheint ein vermehrter Anfall von zirkulierenden Zellkernantigenen durch vermehrten Zelluntergang durch Apoptose sowie eine ungenügende Beseitigung des apoptotischen Zellmaterials durch Phagozyten zu Grunde zu liegen. Auch die Entwicklung einer gesteigerten Lichtempfindlichkeit ist über diesen Mechanismus zu verstehen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit lassen einen direkten Zusammenhang der Erkrankung Lupus erythematodes mit dem A-homozygoten Genotyp im untersuchten Fas-Gen-Promotor-Einzelnukleotidpolymorphismus vermuten. Bei genauerer Differenzierung des Patienten-kollektivs nach den einzelnen Lupussubtypen zeigte sich, dass diese Assoziation sich im Besonderen auf den systemischen Lupus erythematodes bezieht. Dadurch wird die Annahme bekräftigt, dass der programmierte Zelltod maßgeblich zur Induktion einer Autoantikörperproduktion beiträgt, die gerade bei der systemischen Form des Lupus erythematodes das klinische Ausmaß bestimmt. Unabhängig von der jeweiligen Lupuserkrankungsform ergab diese Arbeit weiterhin ein signifikant gehäuftes Vorkommen des Genotyps AA bei Patienten mit einem positiven Ro-Autoantikörpertiter. Dadurch wird ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen der Bildung von Autoantikörpern gegen Ro-Ribonukleoproteine und der A-Homozygotie des untersuchten Fas-Gen-Promotor-Einzelnukleotidpolymorphismus wahrscheinlich. Eine mögliche Assoziation zwischen dem programmierten Zelltod und einer gesteigerten Lichtempfindlichkeit bei Patienten mit Lupus erythematodes kann in dieser Arbeit nicht bestätigt werden. Es bleibt weiteren Studien in der Zukunft überlassen, diese Ergebnisse durch Untersuchung eines deutlich größeren Patientenkollektivs zu relativieren und neue Ansatzpunkte zur vollständigen Aufklärung der Ätiopathogenese der Autoimmunreaktion bei Lupus erythematodes zu finden

How to consistently make your product, technology or system more environmentally-sustainable?

Human activities are currently uns ustainable, causing many damages to ecosystems, human health and natural resources. In this setting, the development of new products and technologies has been increasingly required to relate to sustainability and ensure that such development goes hand-in-hand with low environmental impacts, low-carbon emissions, low environmental footprints or more sustainability as a whole. To enable a scientifically-sound and consistent documentation of such sustainable development, quantitative assessments of all environmental impacts are needed. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is recognized as the most holistic tool to address that need. LCA has two main strengths: (1) the ability to quantify all relevant environmental impacts – not just climate change, but also metal depletion, water use, toxicity exerted by pollutants on ecosystems and human health, etc.; and (2) making the assessment of the product/technology in a life cycle perspective, from the extraction of raw materials through production and use/operation of the product up to its final disposal. Fully embracing these 2 features enables to minimize the risk of burden-shifting, e.g. if impacts on climate change are being reduced while increasing other relevant environmental impacts or if impacts are shifted from the use stage of a product to the manufacturing stage as a result of a change in the product composition. Here, we provide a glimpse at how LCA can help for eco-design purposes, moving towards the use of low-impact materials, identifying environmental hotspots parts of the life cycle with largest environmental impacts), making prospective simulations through scenario analyses, comparing and selecting most environmentally-friendly product/technology alternatives, reporting on the environmental performances of the system. We rely on state-of -the-art sciencein the food sector, the aquaculture sector and the energy sector to showcase and illustrate the potential of LCA to undertake the environmental sustainability challenge and support product/technology/system development

2008-2009 Roberta Rust in Recital: Honoring Haydn

A concert commemorating the bicentennial of the death of Franz Joseph Haydn in May 1809

A role for Caf1 in mRNA deadenylation and decay in trypanosomes and human cells

The eukaryotic Ccr4/Caf1/Not complex is involved in deadenylation of mRNAs. The Caf1 and Ccr4 subunits both potentially have deadenylating enzyme activity. We investigate here the roles of Ccr4 and Caf1 in deadenylation in two organisms that separated early in eukaryotic evolution: humans and trypanosomes. In Trypanosoma brucei, we found a complex containing CAF1, NOT1, NOT2 and NOT5, DHH1 and a possible homologue of Caf130; no homologue of Ccr4 was found. Trypanosome CAF1 has deadenylation activity, and is essential for cell survival. Depletion of trypanosome CAF1 delayed deadenylation and degradation of constitutively expressed mRNAs. Human cells have two isozymes of Caf1: simultaneous depletion of both inhibited degradation of an unstable reporter mRNA. In both species, depletion of Caf1 homologues inhibited deadenylation of bulk RNA and resulted in an increase in average poly(A) tail length

Metabolite and lipoprotein profiles reveal sex-related oxidative stress imbalance in de novo drug-naive Parkinson's disease patients

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the neurological disorder showing the greatest rise in prevalence from 1990 to 2016. Despite clinical definition criteria and a tremendous effort to develop objective biomarkers, precise diagnosis of PD is still unavailable at early stage. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have used omic methods to unveil the molecular basis of PD, providing a detailed characterization of potentially pathological alterations in various biological specimens. Metabolomics could provide useful insights to deepen our knowledge of PD aetiopathogenesis, to identify signatures that distinguish groups of patients and uncover responsive biomarkers of PD that may be significant in early detection and in tracking the disease progression and drug treatment efficacy. The present work is the first large metabolomic study based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with an independent validation cohort aiming at the serum characterization of de novo drug-naive PD patients. Here, NMR is applied to sera from large training and independent validation cohorts of German subjects. Multivariate and univariate approaches are used to infer metabolic differences that characterize the metabolite and the lipoprotein profiles of newly diagnosed de novo drug-naive PD patients also in relation to the biological sex of the subjects in the study, evidencing a more pronounced fingerprint of the pathology in male patients. The presence of a validation cohort allowed us to confirm altered levels of acetone and cholesterol in male PD patients. By comparing the metabolites and lipoproteins levels among de novo drug-naive PD patients, age- and sex-matched healthy controls, and a group of advanced PD patients, we detected several descriptors of stronger oxidative stress

Early downregulation of hsa-miR-144-3p in serum from drug-naïve Parkinson's disease patients.

Advanced age represents one of the major risk factors for Parkinson's Disease. Recent biomedical studies posit a role for microRNAs, also known to be remodelled during ageing. However, the relationship between microRNA remodelling and ageing in Parkinson's Disease, has not been fully elucidated. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to unravel the relevance of microRNAs as biomarkers of Parkinson's Disease within the ageing framework. We employed Next Generation Sequencing to profile serum microRNAs from samples informative for Parkinson's Disease (recently diagnosed, drug-naïve) and healthy ageing (centenarians) plus healthy controls, age-matched with Parkinson's Disease patients. Potential microRNA candidates markers, emerging from the combination of differential expression and network analyses, were further validated in an independent cohort including both drug-naïve and advanced Parkinson's Disease patients, and healthy siblings of Parkinson's Disease patients at higher genetic risk for developing the disease. While we did not find evidences of microRNAs co-regulated in Parkinson's Disease and ageing, we report that hsa-miR-144-3p is consistently down-regulated in early Parkinson's Disease patients. Moreover, interestingly, functional analysis revealed that hsa-miR-144-3p is involved in the regulation of coagulation, a process known to be altered in Parkinson's Disease. Our results consistently show the down-regulation of hsa-mir144-3p in early Parkinson's Disease, robustly confirmed across a variety of analytical and experimental analyses. These promising results ask for further research to unveil the functional details of the involvement of hsa-mir144-3p in Parkinson's Disease

The role of deadenylation in the degradation of unstable mRNAs in trypanosomes

Removal of the poly(A) tail is the first step in the degradation of many eukaryotic mRNAs. In metazoans and yeast, the Ccr4/Caf1/Not complex has the predominant deadenylase activity, while the Pan2/Pan3 complex may trim poly(A) tails to the correct size, or initiate deadenylation. In trypanosomes, turnover of several constitutively-expressed or long-lived mRNAs is not affected by depletion of the 5′–3′ exoribonuclease XRNA, but is almost completely inhibited by depletion of the deadenylase CAF1. In contrast, two highly unstable mRNAs, encoding EP procyclin and a phosphoglycerate kinase, PGKB, accumulate when XRNA levels are reduced. We here show that degradation of EP mRNA was partially inhibited after CAF1 depletion. RNAi-targeting trypanosome PAN2 had a mild effect on global deadenylation, and on degradation of a few mRNAs including EP. By amplifying and sequencing degradation intermediates, we demonstrated that a reduction in XRNA had no effect on degradation of a stable mRNA encoding a ribosomal protein, but caused accumulation of EP mRNA fragments that had lost substantial portions of the 5′ and 3′ ends. The results support a model in which trypanosome mRNAs can be degraded by at least two different, partially independent, cytoplasmic degradation pathways attacking both ends of the mRNA

Heterogeneity of prodromal Parkinson symptoms in siblings of Parkinson disease patients

Abstract: A prodromal phase of Parkinson’s disease (PD) may precede motor manifestations by decades. PD patients’ siblings are at higher risk for PD, but the prevalence and distribution of prodromal symptoms are unknown. The study objectives were (1) to assess motor and non-motor features estimating prodromal PD probability in PD siblings recruited within the European PROPAG-AGEING project; (2) to compare motor and non-motor symptoms to the well-established DeNoPa cohort. 340 PD siblings from three sites (Bologna, Seville, Kassel/Goettingen) underwent clinical and neurological evaluations of PD markers. The German part of the cohort was compared with German de novo PD patients (dnPDs) and healthy controls (CTRs) from DeNoPa. Fifteen (4.4%) siblings presented with subtle signs of motor impairment, with MDS-UPDRS-III scores not clinically different from CTRs. Symptoms of orthostatic hypotension were present in 47 siblings (13.8%), no different to CTRs (p = 0.072). No differences were found for olfaction and overall cognition; German-siblings performed worse than CTRs in visuospatial-executive and language tasks. 3/147 siblings had video-polysomnography-confirmed REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), none was positive on the RBD Screening Questionnaire. 173/300 siblings had <1% probability of having prodromal PD; 100 between 1 and 10%, 26 siblings between 10 and 80%, one fulfilled the criteria for prodromal PD. According to the current analysis, we cannot confirm the increased risk of PD siblings for prodromal PD. Siblings showed a heterogeneous distribution of prodromal PD markers and probability. Additional parameters, including strong disease markers, should be investigated to verify if these results depend on validity and sensitivity of prodromal PD criteria, or if siblings’ risk is not elevated