Biochemical Society Research Articles

The Molecular Biology of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

IBDs (inflammatory bowel diseases) are a group of diseases affecting the gastrointestinal tract. The diseases are multifactorial and cover genetic aspects: susceptibility genes, innate and adaptive responses to inflammation, and structure and efficacy of the mucosal protective barrier. Animal models of IBD have been developed to gain further knowledge of the disease mechanisms. These topics form an overlapping background to enable an improved understanding of the molecular features of these diseases. A series of articles is presented based on the topics covered at the Biochemical Society Focused Meeting The Molecular Biology of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

Models of Dementia: an introductory overview

The analysis of the molecular development of AD (Alzheimer's disease) is technically challenging, due to the chronic nature of the disease, the lack of early and definitive clinical diagnosis, and the fact that the abnormal molecular pathology occurs in the brain. Therefore appropriate animal models of AD are essential if we are to dissect the processes leading to molecular pathology, and ultimately to test the efficacy of potential therapies before clinical studies. Unfortunately, there is controversy over the benefits of the available models, the only consensus of opinion being that no perfect model currently exists. The investigation of animal models is extremely costly and time-consuming, therefore researchers tend to focus on one or two models. For scientists entering the AD research field, it can be difficult to identify the most appropriate model for their needs. Therefore the Models of Dementia: the Good, the Bad and the Future Biochemical Society Focused Meeting provided a platform for discussion and debate on the use and limitations of current models, the most appropriate methods for their characterization and identification of the most pressing needs of the field in general.

How Mexican biochemistry developed and present challenges

How Mexican biochemistry developed and present challenges

Biochemical Society Award winners in 2012

Biochemical Society Award winners in 2012

DISCOVERY 100: A competition to celebrete 100 years of the Biochemical Society

How do you summarize the past 100 years of discoveries in the biological sciences? That kind of challenge would be daunting for any one person – but fortunately, we had you to help.

Recent Advances in Membrane Biochemistry

This Biochemical Society Annual Symposium on Recent Advances in Membrane Biochemistry was organized to bring together experts from across the spectrum of biomembrane disciplines from the biological to the biophysical/structural, with the intention of promoting interactions and collaborations across the field. We were keen that the potential for improving human health that stems from a deeper understanding of membrane structure/function should be acknowledged, especially in the light of the increasing numbers of membrane protein structures that continue to be made available to the biomembrane community. This foreword provides an idea of what was communicated in the various sessions and, we hope, gives an impression of the excitement generated by the speakers and delegates at this over-subscribed Symposium.

A new emphasis on influence

Over the last 18 months, the Biochemical Society's Education Department has made a conscious effort to become more involved with education policy work. During this time, we have responded to consultations, advised the awarding organizations on the content of their new science GCSEs, established a series of education policy events and contributed to the National Curriculum review. Wherever possible, we have worked in close partnership with the Society of Biology (SB) and other sister societies. Read on to find out more…

Celebrating the Centenary with a new collaboration: Meetings News

Since moving into a shared building in 2009, the Biochemical Society (BS), British Ecological Society (BES) and Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) have worked together on a portfolio of joint ventures. The first joint Society conference took place in January at Charles Darwin House, London, and proved to be a great start to 2011 and the Biochemical Society Centenary celebrations. Organizing a joint conference between Societies can be a challenge and a workable model for joint events takes time to agree. Publication rights need to be discussed and budgets approved. In addition, the operational aspects of running joint events often mean that each Society must amend its practices, procedures and culture. On top of that, to keep the event truly joint, care must be taken at every stage of the planning process to ensure the science is cross-disciplinary, and that sessions are not biased towards one of the organizing Societies. Undeterred, the three Societies committed to running a joint conference, and agreed that maintaining communications every step of the way was the key to success. Regular planning meetings were helped in no small part by the fact that we can now holler over our shared office space at Charles Darwin House!

Protein Targeting to Exosomes/Microvesicles by Plasma Membrane Anchors

Animal cells secrete small vesicles, otherwise known as exosomes and microvesicles (EMVs). A short, N-terminal acylation tag can target a highly oligomeric cytoplasmic protein, TyA, into secreted vesicles (Fang, Y., Wu, N., Gan, X., Yan, W., Morell, J. C., and Gould, S. J. (2007) PLoS Biol. 5, 1267-1283). However, it is not clear whether this is true for other membrane anchors or other highly oligomeric, cytoplasmic proteins. We show here that a variety of plasma membrane anchors can target TyA-GFP to sites of vesicle budding and into EMVs, including: (i) a myristoylation tag; (ii) a phosphatidylinositol-(4,5)-bisphosphate (PIP(2))-binding domain; (iii), a phosphatidylinositol-(3,4,5)-trisphosphate-binding domain; (iv) a prenylation/palmitoylation tag, and (v) a type-1 plasma membrane protein, CD43. However, the relative budding efficiency induced by these plasma membrane anchors varied over a 10-fold range, from 100% of control (AcylTyA-GFP) for the myristoylation tag and PIP(2)-binding domain, to one-third or less for the others, respectively. Targeting TyA-GFP to endosome membranes by fusion to a phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate-binding domain induced only a slight budding of TyA-GFP, ∼2% of control, and no budding was observed when TyA-GFP was targeted to Golgi membranes via a phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate-binding domain. We also found that a plasma membrane anchor can target two other highly oligomeric, cytoplasmic proteins to EMVs. These observations support the hypothesis that plasma membrane anchors can target highly oligomeric, cytoplasmic proteins to EMVs. Our data also provide additional parallels between EMV biogenesis and retrovirus budding, as the anchors that induced the greatest budding of TyA-GFP are the same as those that mediate retrovirus budding.

Androgens 2010

Dr Derek Lavery, research fellow in the Androgen Signalling Laboratory at Imperial College London, was awarded a Biochemical Society travel grant to attend the 6th Biennial Androgens conference in Leuven, Belgium. This conference aims to bring together both basic mechanistic and clinical aspects of the androgen signalling field.

How far has it come?: Systems Biology

As a phrase, ‘systems biology’ was probably invented in 1968 by Mesarovć1, but for the first three decades it had essentially no impact: PubMed lists just 19 publications that mention it in all the years before 2000. However, the first output from the human genome project stimulated an explosive growth, and the number of publications referring to ‘systems biology’ reached about 500 in 2005 alone, the year when the Biochemical Society organized a Focused Meeting entitled ‘Systems Biology: will it work?’. After that it became too much effort to continue counting, and the number is certainly much higher now.

Centenary events from the Education Department

To celebrate 100 years of the Biochemical Society, the Education Department have lined up an exciting programme of Centenary events for 2011. We're planning to get out and about and deliver a range of activities throughout the UK aimed at schools, university students and the general public. Read on to find out more…

MicroRNAs and Their Targets: Promises and Pitfalls: Meeting reports

A Biochemical Society Workshop held at Charles Darwin House, London, UK, 2 November 2010?????

Websites of note

Websites of note

Dale's Tales of Summer at the Society

With more graduates than ever competing for jobs after university, securing work experience is essential for any student wishing to make their CV stand out. This summer, I was lucky to secure a highly competitive internship with the Biochemical Society's busy Education Department, and got a chance to work at the front line of engaging the public with science.

Cytoplasmic mRNA: move it, use it or lose it!

Once an mRNA is synthesized and processed, the immediate translation and later destruction of the transcript is not as inevitable as the central molecular biology dogma suggests. Interest in the field of post-transcriptional control continues to grow rapidly, as regulation of these multiple steps in gene expression is implicated in diverse aspects of biology such as metabolism, neurology, reproduction and viral lifecycle regulation. Researchers who utilize various combinations of human studies, animal models, cellular, genetic, biochemical and molecular techniques were brought together at the University of Edinburgh to discuss their latest findings. In this article, we introduce the content of the related reviews presented in this issue of Biochemical Society Transactions which together illustrate a major theme of the meeting content: namely the need to understand how dynamic changes in mRNP (messenger ribonucleoprotein) complexes modulate the multifunctionality of regulatory proteins which link different post-transcriptional regulatory events.

RNA channelling by the eukaryotic exosome

The eukaryotic exosome is a key nuclease for the degradation, processing and quality control of a wide variety of RNAs. Here, we report electron microscopic reconstructions and pseudo-atomic models of the ten-subunit Saccharomyces cerevisiae exosome in the unbound and RNA-bound states. In the RNA-bound structures, extra density that is visible at the entry and exit sites of the exosome channel indicates that a substrate-threading mechanism is used by the eukaryotic exosome. This channelling mechanism seems to be conserved in exosome-like complexes from all domains of life, and might have been present in the most recent common ancestor.

Embryonic? The start of something exciting…

As the Biochemical Society prepares for its Centenary year celebrations, groundwork has already begun on developing an exciting new play for school students to be performed throughout the UK in 2011.

Structural Glycobiology and Human Health

The glycans (carbohydrates) form a diverse group of biomolecules which play active parts in most physiological processes. The field of structural glycobiology concerns the structures of the glycans themselves, the proteins which interact with them and the nature of the interactions between the two. The resulting information is important for our understanding of human health and disease, and for development of new therapeutic strategies. A series of articles is introduced based on the topics covered at the Structural Glycobiology and Human Health Biochemical Society Focused Meeting. Their subjects range from in-depth determinations of three-dimensional protein structure to broad screening techniques for glycan-protein interactions relevant to disease processes, including bacterial, parasitic and viral infections, inflammatory processes, cancer and diabetes.

Young Life Scientists

The Young Life Scientists (YLS) project aims to give a group of earlycareer researchers the opportunity to organize a scientific conference on their subject of interest, for their peers. This year's symposia consisted of two different topics. The first, a joint project run with the Physiological Society and the British Phar macological Society, was based on asthma and its treatments. The second, sponsored by the Biochemical Society only, was based on the role of fatty acids in health and disease, confront ing the beneficial and detrimental effects on the human body. Overall, the YLS meetings reached nearly 200 students and young researchers this year; both events were a great success with the organizing committees doing a great job.