tailieunhanh - Báo cáo sinh học: " Hide and seek: the secret identity of the phosphatidylserine receptor"

Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học Journal of Biology đề tài: Hide and seek: the secret identity of the phosphatidylserine receptor. | J. Biol. Journal of Biology BioMed Central Minireview Hide and seek the secret identity of the phosphatidylserine receptor Patrick Williamson and Robert A SchlegeP Addresses Department of Biology Amherst College Amherst MA 01002 USA. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Penn State University University Park PA 16802 USA. Correspondence Patrick Williamson. E-mail plwilliamson@ Published 23 September 2004 Journal of Biology 2004 3 14 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http content 3 4 14 2004 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract Phosphatidylserine on the dying cell surface helps identify apoptotic cells to phagocytes which then engulf them. A candidate phagocyte receptor for phosphatidylserine was identified using phage display but the phenotypes of knockout mice lacking this presumptive receptor as well as the location of the protein within cells cast doubt on the assignment of this protein as the phosphatidylserine receptor. The genome project and sequence databases have generally illuminated the molecular basis of cellular functions but sometimes this illumination can be an electronic will-o -the-wisp. Over the past few months a series of papers culminating in the description of a knockout mouse by Lengeling and co-workers in Journal of Biology 1 has strongly suggested that a gene sequence thought to illuminate the molecular basis of apoptotic cell clearance has in fact led us astray and that the path to it will have to be retraced. The problem Apoptosis or programmed cell death is a normal physiologic process for orderly removal of effete cells. As a process apoptosis fell below the notice of cell biologists for quite some time in part because cells dying an apoptotic death in vivo vanish almost immediately from view. They vanish because they are promptly engulfed either by a neighbor or by a professional phagocytic macrophage within the confines of the resulting phagosome the dying cell .