Excerpts from Recent Articles

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get a grip - January 2012

Someone once told me that they had spread grease all over the drainpipe that crawled up the front of their house, to prevent cats from climbing up it. It’s a very simple and pretty harmless way of keeping the enemy away. It’s hardly surprising, then, that Nature thought up just the same trick millions of years ago. Many higher plants’ stems – and also sometimes their leaves – are covered with a whitish surface, which is slightly greasy to the touch. Botanists have known for a long time that wax in plants has many roles and that the powdery blooms on stems seem to be involved in keeping harmful insects away. The question is: how? But perhaps even just as important a question is: what makes the wax? Because if scientists are able to be on a more intimate level with what produces it, then they will be able to think up insect repellents that are more in keeping with Nature’s ways. Not so long ago, researchers discovered an enzyme which synthesises lupeol, the wax component which forms the greater part of the powdery bloom. (PDF version - 47K bytes)

UniProt cross references

Lupeol synthase, Ricinus communis, (Castor bean) : Q2XPU7

zips, necklaces and mobile telephones - December 2011

I would hate to leave the house without the odd necklace hanging round my neck. But I happen to be fortunate. Millions of other people are not. That is because a lot of jewellery contains the silvery-white metal known as nickel, which can cause disagreeable skin conditions. If nickel were confined to jewellery, things would not be so bad but it is also frequently found in zips, coins and mobile telephones for instance. And who, in our society, can easily dispense with any one of these items? 65 million people in Europe suffer from nickel allergy; that is a large part of the population. Nickel ions are able to creep off a necklace or a coin – following sweat or rubbing for example – and sink through the first layers of skin where they will trigger off an immune response resulting in dermatitis. But why does it happen in some people and not in others? The answer seems to reside in a very small region of a protein known as the toll-like receptor 4, or TLR4, which has been shown to be at the heart of nickel allergy. (PDF version - 336K bytes)

UniProt cross references

Toll-like receptor 4, Homo sapiens, (Human) : O00206

a missing sense - November 2011

We are reminded regularly of how fragile life is and how easily the subtle balance of our molecular make-up can be shifted and cause devastating effects. Deafness is one. Deafness can be brought about by a number of incidents. It can occur following an illness or an accident for example. Or it can be congenital. Pendred Syndrome afflicts one out of two thousand human beings and is characterised not only by deafness in both ears but also – though not always – by a swelling in the thyroid gland, otherwise known as goitre. The symptoms of Pendred Syndrome have been known for over a century, but scientists are only just beginning to understand what it is that can leave a human-being deprived of a sense which is so vital. One of the culprits is known as Pendrin – a protein which acts as an ion transporter. (PDF version - 165K bytes)

UniProt cross references

Pendrin, Homo sapiens, (Human) : O43511

a balanced mind - October 2011

When I leave for work every morning, I know exactly where to get my train. This may sound quite absurd but just imagine, for one moment, that you had no memory. You would always be losing your keys. You would never remember where you had left your shoes. And you’d probably fall down the front doorstep daily because you had forgotten there was one. Thanks to our faculty for memorising things, life is far easier for us. We learn how to talk. We learn to avoid awkward situations. We even remember who our children are. On the molecular front, there is a lot going on. It all has to do with neurons and their ability to pass on messages and connect to one another. Unsurprisingly, many proteins are involved in the processes of learning and memory, and much research has been done on them in the past years. There is one protein, however, known as RGS14, which is a bit of a conundrum. Indeed, RGS14 seems to have the intriguing role of suppressing memory... (PDF version - 376K bytes)

UniProt cross references

Regulator of G protein signaling 14 (RGS14), Mus musculus, (Mouse) : P97492

Regulator of G protein signaling 14 (RGS14), Homo sapiens, (Human) : O43566

life's tremors - September 2011

Destruction is sometimes necessary for life to continue. It may sound paradoxical but examples are many. Our body shreds the food we eat to use the parts to feed itself. Certain cells commit suicide when they are of no use anymore. And damaged proteins within our cells are degraded and disposed of before they do any harm. Unsurprisingly, these are processes which involve multiple molecular interactions and are part of complex biochemical pathways – and when something goes wrong, our body is likely to feel the consequences. There is growing evidence that Parkinson’s disease (PD) may well be caused by the accumulation, in certain neurons, of damaged proteins which – under normal circumstances – would have been degraded. Whether it is the accumulation of non-degraded proteins or the subsequent modified turnover of specific proteins which are the cause of PD, no one knows. But scientists have discovered one particular protein, suitably baptised “Parkin”, which seems to be at the heart of the matter. (PDF version - 111K bytes)

UniProt cross references

E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase parkin, Homo sapiens (Human) : O60260