Mitochondrial myopathies belong to a larger group of systemic diseases caused by morphological or biochemical abnormalities of mitochondria. Mitochondrial disorders can be caused by mutations in either the mitochondrial or nuclear genome. Only 5% of all mitochondrial disorders are autosomal dominant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA central feature of integrin interaction with physiologic ligands is the monodentate binding of a ligand carboxylate to a Mg(2+) ion hexacoordinated at the metal ion-dependent adhesion site (MIDAS) in the integrin A domain. This interaction stabilizes the A domain in the high-affinity state, which is distinguished from the default low-affinity state by tertiary changes in the domain that culminate in cell adhesion. Small molecule ligand-mimetic integrin antagonists act as partial agonists, eliciting similar activating conformational changes in the A domain, which has contributed to paradoxical adhesion and increased patient mortality in large clinical trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a paralytic and usually fatal disorder caused by motor-neuron degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. Most cases of ALS are sporadic but about 5-10% are familial. Mutations in superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), TAR DNA-binding protein (TARDBP, also known as TDP43) and fused in sarcoma (FUS, also known as translocated in liposarcoma (TLS)) account for approximately 30% of classic familial ALS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mutations in optineurin have recently been linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Objective: To determine whether optineurin-positive skeinlike inclusions are a common pathologic feature in ALS, including SOD1 -linked ALS.
Design: Clinical case series.
Objective: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal disorder of motor neuron degeneration. Most cases of ALS are sporadic (SALS), but about 5 to 10% of ALS cases are familial (FALS). Recent studies have shown that mutations in FUS are causal in approximately 4 to 5% of FALS and some apparent SALS cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe divalent cations Mg(2+) and Ca(2+) regulate the interaction of integrins with their cognate ligands, with Mg(2+) uniformly facilitating and Ca(2+) generally inhibiting such interactions in vitro. Because both cations are present in mm concentrations in vivo, the physiologic relevance of the in vitro observations is unclear. We measured the affinity of both cations to the inactive and active states of the ligand- and cation-binding A-domain (CD11bA) from integrin CD11b/CD18 in the absence and presence of the single-chain 107 antibody (scFv107), an activation-insensitive ligand-mimetic antibody.
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