Table of Contents

Abstract: There has never been a more exciting time to study the science of living systems. Contemporary biology is a vibrant field which grows stronger year on year. Biological scientists have access to powerful new tools and techniques that even recently would have seemed like science fiction. We are enjoying ‘a wellspring of technical advancements’ [1]. The consequence is a deeper and wider understanding of living systems. Older approaches remain important and often essential, but new unbiased and often fast approaches are helping us to deploy our traditional approaches more rationally. The result of this synergy of old and new is an explosion in the field of biological sciences. It may seem daunting to consider what lies ahead and the challenges will be great, but the pace of discovery is increasingly rapid.[...]

Abstract: Discovery of prognostic and diagnostic biomarker gene signatures for diseases, such as cancer, is seen as a major step towards a better personalized medicine. During the last decade various methods, mainly coming from the machine learning or statistical domain, have been proposed for that purpose. However, one important obstacle for making gene signatures a standard tool in clinical diagnosis is the typical low reproducibility of these signatures combined with the difficulty to achieve a clear biological interpretation. For that purpose in the last years there has been a growing interest in approaches that try to integrate information from molecular interaction networks. Here we review the current state of research in this field by giving an overview about so-far proposed approaches.

Abstract: Due to a mutation in the Foxp3 transcription factor, Scurfy mice lack regulatory T-cells that maintain self-tolerance of the immune system. They develop multi-organ inflammation (MOI) and die around four weeks old. The affected organs are skin, tail, lungs and liver. In humans, endocrine and gastrointestinal inflammation are also observed, hence the disease is termed IPEX (Immunodysregulation, Polyendocrinopathy, Enteropathy, X-linked) syndrome. The three week period of fatal MOI offers a useful autoimmune model in which the controls by genetics, T-cell subsets, cytokines, and effector mechanisms could be efficiently investigated. In this report, we will review published work, summarize our recent studies of Scurfy double mutants lacking specific autoimmune-related genes, discuss the cellular and cytokine controls by these genes on MOI, the organ-specificities of the MOI controlled by environments, and the effector mechanisms regulated by specific Th cytokines, including several newly identified control mechanisms for organ-specific autoimmune response.

Abstract: Development of the atherosclerotic plaque involves a complex interplay between a number of cell types and an extensive inter-cellular communication via cell bound as well as soluble mediators. The family of tribbles proteins has recently been identified as novel controllers of pro-inflammatory signal transduction. The objective of this study was to address the expression pattern of all three tribbles proteins in atherosclerotic plaques from a mouse model of atherosclerosis. Each tribbles were expressed in vascular smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells as well as in resident macrophages of mouse atherosclerotic plaques. The role of IL-1 mediated inflammatory events in controlling tribbles expression was also addressed by inducing experimental atherosclerosis in ApoE^−/−IL1R1^−/− (double knockout) mice. Immunohistochemical analysis of these mice showed a selective decrease in the percentage of trb-1 expressing macrophages, compared to the ApoE^−/− cohort (14.7% ± 1.55 vs. 26.3% ± 1.19). The biological significance of this finding was verified in vitro where overexpression of trb-1 in macrophages led to a significant attenuation (~70%) of IL-6 production as well as a suppressed IL-12 expression induced by a proinflammatory stimulus. In this in vitro setting, expression of truncated trb-1 mutants suggests that the kinase domain of this protein is sufficient to exert this inhibitory action.