(Press-News.org) Scientists have taken an important step toward a new class of antibiotics aimed at stopping lung infections. They found that a protein found in large airways, called "SPLUNC1," binds to lipids critical to defending against bacterial and viral infections, as well as keeping lung tissue flexible and hydrated. This discovery moves SPLUNC1 closer toward becoming a viable therapy and was reported in the December 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal.
"By shedding light on the mechanisms and interactions between various elements of pulmonary surfactant, our findings represent significant headway toward developing novel treatments for a variety of pulmonary diseases," said Gongyi Zhang, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado. "We anticipate that our study will bring us closer to transforming SPLUNC1 into a promising therapeutic option to help asthma and COPD patients clear bacterial and viral infections from the airway."
To make this discovery, Zhang and colleagues overexpressed and crystallized the SPLUNC1 protein. The three dimensional molecular structure of SPLUNC1 was then determined using x-ray crystallography. Next, its structure was compared to existing structures of a similar antibacterial protein (homolog), called the "bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein" or BPI. The researchers found a dramatic surface charge difference between SPLUNC1 and BPI, suggesting that SPLUNC1 and BPI have different lipid ligands. Finally, a lipid ligand, dipalmitoyl-phosphatidylcholine, or DPPC, was found to bind specifically to SPLUNC1. And DPPD is the surfactant that our lungs use to keep airways open. This sheds new light on the way SPLUNC1 functions in the human airway and the structural information uncovered allows for a better understanding of its properties and potential.
"The way to live forever is simple: Don't stop breathing," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "The problem is that this isn't as easy as it sounds, especially for people with serious lung diseases and infections. This report offers hope that even some of the most difficult infections, from MRSA to Pseudomonas, can be treated in the future."
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Receive monthly highlights from The FASEB Journal by e-mail. Sign up at http://www.faseb.org/fjupdate.aspx. The FASEB Journal is published by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). It is the world's most cited biology journal according to the Institute for Scientific Information and has been recognized by the Special Libraries Association as one of the top 100 most influential biomedical journals of the past century.
FASEB is composed of 27 societies with more than 120,000 members, making it the largest coalition of biomedical research associations in the United States. Our mission is to advance health and welfare by promoting progress and education in biological and biomedical sciences through service to our member societies and collaborative advocacy.
Details: Fangkun Ning, Chao Wang, Karin Zemski Berry, Pitchaimani Kandasamy, Haolin Liu, Robert C. Murphy, Dennis R. Voelker, Chu Won Nho, Choel-Ho Pan, Shaodong Dai, Liwen Niu, Hong-Wei Chu, and Gongyi Zhang. Structural characterization of the pulmonary innate immune protein SPLUNC1 and identification of lipid ligands. FASEB J. December 2014 28:5349-5360; doi:10.1096/fj.14-259291 ; http://www.fasebj.org/content/28/12/5349.abstract
This news release is available in German. Traumatic events leave their mark. People exposed to a traumatic experience early in life are more likely to be affected by illnesses such as borderline personality disorder or depression. However such experience can also have positive effects in certain circumstances. Thus, moderate stress in childhood may help a person develop strategies to better cope with stress in adulthood.
Further, it has long been recognised by psychologists and psychiatrists that the negative effects of trauma experienced by parents can be seen in ...
New research involving rats, and published in the December 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal, suggests that if you were born at a low birth weight, supplemental co-enzyme Q (CoQ) may lower your risk for heart disease. This enzyme, which is naturally made in the body, is required to ensure the proper functioning of cell mitochondria and also protects cells from oxidative damage. Feeding low birth weight rat offspring extra CoQ prevented the age-associated damage that causes heart disease. Additionally, the reports shows that CoQ is reduced in white blood cells from low birth ...
Tropical Storm Hagupit was just a low pressure area on Nov. 30, but warm waters and good atmospheric conditions allowed the storm to develop rapidly. By Dec. 1 the low pressure area strengthened into a tropical storm when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Radiometer known as the MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Hagupit in the western Pacific Ocean on Dec. 1 at 00:05 UTC (7:05 p.m. EST, Nov. 30). The picture showed a concentration of strong thunderstorms around the ...
If we believe a negative trait we possess is linked to a related positive characteristic, we will be more productive in that domain, New York University researchers have found. Their study, which appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, establishes a novel "silver lining theory": negative attributes can produce positive results.
"People know that a weakness can be also be a strength, but these results show that if we actually believe it, we can use these beliefs to our advantage," says Alexandra Wesnousky, an NYU doctoral candidate and the study's lead ...
This news release is available in German. Jülich, 27 November 2014 - The resolution of scanning tunnelling microscopes can be improved dramatically by attaching small molecules or atoms to their tip. The resulting images were the first to show the geometric structure of molecules and have generated a lot of interest among scientists over the last few years. Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague have now used computer simulations to gain deeper insights into the physics of these new imaging techniques. ...
This news release is available in German.
Genome engineering with the RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas9 system in animals and plants is changing biology. It is easier to use and more efficient than other genetic engineering tools, thus it is already being applied in laboratories all over the world just a few years after its discovery. This rapid adoption and the history of the system are the core topics of a review published in the renowned journal Science. The review was written by the discoverers of the system Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier, who works at the Helmholtz Centre ...
Teenage boys are perhaps more known for playing computer games but girls are better at making them, a University of Sussex study has found.
Researchers in the University's Informatics department asked pupils at a secondary school to design and program their own computer game using a new visual programming language that shows pupils the computer programs they have written in plain English.
Dr Kate Howland and Dr Judith Good found that the girls in the classroom wrote more complex programs in their games than the boys and also learnt more about coding compared to the ...
"We have not seen an ice free period in the Arctic Ocean for 2,6 million years. However, we may see it in our lifetime." says marine geologist Jochen Knies. In an international collaborative project, Knies has studied the historic emergence of the ice in the Arctic Ocean. The results are published in Nature Communications.
The extent of sea ice cover in Arctic was much less than it is today between four and five million years ago. The maximum winter extent did not reaching its current location until around 2.6 million years ago. This new knowledge can now be used to ...
This news release is available in German. FRANKFURT The chances of patients with Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukaemia (Ph+) being cured has greatly increased in recent years. Nevertheless, a high percentage of patients have developed resistance to available medication. But now, haematologists from Frankfurt, working with a Russian pharmaceutical company, have developed a new active substance that effectively combats the most aggressive forms of Philadelphia chromosome-positive leukaemia, both in vitro and in vivo. They have reported this in the current edition ...
Tropical Depression 21W crossed the Philippines and moved into the South China Sea where warm waters helped strengthen the storm into Tropical Storm Sinlaku. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the storm and captured an image that showed it appeared elongated.
Despite the strengthening of Tropical Depression 21W into a tropical storm on Nov. 28, it appeared elongated from southwest to northeast on visible imagery taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua. The MODIS image also showed that the strongest thunderstorms ...
