Notable

S. Mueller et al., "Interaction of the poliovirus receptor CD155 with the dynein light chain Tctex-1 and its implication for poliovirus pathogenesis," Journal of Biological Chemistry, 277:7897-904, March 8, 2002.

"This paper provides a molecular mechanism for how poliovirus hijacks cellular retrograde transport machinery to ascend along axons. A clear exposition of poliovirus pathogenesis and a testable model."

M. Budayova-Spano et al., "The crystal structure of the zymogen catalytic domain of complement protease C1r reveals that a disruptive mechanical stress is required to trigger activation of the C1 complex," EMBO Journal, 21:231-9, Feb. 1, 2002.

"The successful crystallization and analysis of a large recombinant fragment of the serine protease, C1r, of the classical complement activation pathway suggests an explanation for the autoactivation of this enzyme. The recognition of antibody bound to microorganisms by the C1q subcomponent of the C1 complex must somehow provoke the activation of the C1q-associated serine proteases. Elegantly, the hypothesis suggests that the energy of a mechanical stress on the C1q collagenous stalks, resulting from the binding of several C1q heads to the target, is transmitted and forces the two protease modules of the open dimeric structure to approach each other."

J.M. Yeakley et al., "Profiling alternative splicing on fiber-optic arrays," Nature Biotechnology, 20:353-8, April 2002.

"This is a first proof-of-principle paper for using a fiber-optic microarray platform allowing for a high-throughput interrogation of alternative splicing in any sequenced genome. Topics like specificity, sensitivity, reproducibility and degree of multiplexing were addressed adequately. The "array-of-array" set-up is specifically interesting for investigating a medium size number of genes on many tissue samples."

N. Kanu et al., "Transfer of scrapie prion infectivity by cell contact in culture," Current Biology, 12:523-30, April 2, 2002.

"This paper demonstrates that propagation of scrapie infection is cell-contact dependent. The mechanism of intercellular prion transmission has remained unclear due to the absence of tractable culture systems in which to systematically study prion transmission from infected to uninfected cells. The robust culture system described here provides a novel tool to study: 1) the contact-dependent mechanism of prion infection; and 2) the cellular and molecular changes associated with infection in the target cells."

J. Chiou et al., "A closed-cycle capillary polymerase chain reaction machine," Analytical Chemistry, 73:2018-21, May 1, 2001.

"A capillary PCR machine has been built and demonstrated to perform 30-cycle PCR runs of a 500-bp target from genomic lambda-DNA with 78% efficiency in 23 minutes, which compares to coventional PCR machines that take 1 to 2 hours. The system moves a 1-microliter droplet between three heat zones in a 1-mm-i.d., oil-filled capillary and uses multielement scattered light detection with active feedback to detect the position of the fluid slug. This paper goes into detailed analysis of the potential optimal cycling times based upon device geometry and fundamental constraints of the biology."

T. Satoh et al., "Activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma stimulates the growth arrest and DNA-damage inducible 153 gene in non-small-cell lung carcinoma cells," Oncogene, 21:2171-80, March 28, 2002.

"[The researchers identify] the transcription factor GADD153/CHOP as a mediator of programmed cell death induced by thiazolidinediones (TZDs). TZD peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPAR-gamma) agonists exert surprisingly broad anti-tumor effects, the molecular basis of which remains obscure. GADD153/CHOP, a transcription factor known to play a role in programmed cell death in cells experiencing endoplasmic reticulum stress, is shown here to be induced by TZD treatment and blocking this induction by antisense oligonucleotides to GADD153 protects from TZD-mediated cell death, implicating GADD153 in the process."

S. Bhattacharyya et al., "Identification of a novel archaebacterial thioredoxin: determination of function through structure," Biochemistry, 41:4760-70, April 16, 2002.

"A novel small thioredoxin protein is identified from archaebacteria by an NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance)-proteomics approach. This study uses a structural genomics search to identify a class of proteins that are functionally consistent with thioredoxins, but have very little sequence or structural homology to known members of this family. The work demonstrates the ability of this method to identify new proteins that do not fall directly from sequence searches. However, it does raise questions about the efficiency of structure-based searches in defining functional classes of proteins."

P.J. Rushton et al., "Synthetic plant promoters containing defined regulatory elements provide novel insights into pathogen- and wound-induced signaling," Plant Cell, 14:749-762, April 2002.

"The paper describes the use of synthetic promotors that contain cis-acting elements derived from wound- and pathogen-induced plant promoters that could be used to enhance the resistance of plants to pathogens without constitutively expressing a foreign gene. In transgenic plants, these promotors, containing a range of different cis-acting elements, can induce local gene expression in response to pathogen attack and wounding."