[The end of life in a long-term care unit].

Following the principles of Leonetti's Law and to improve practices in long-term care units, caregivers decided to create a decision aid to help in the process to determine whether to limit care, adapted to the profile of the unit's residents. The aid is the fruit of a collective and ethical approach which helps caregivers decide on the action to take in the event of an acute crisis and enables the patient to express their wishes concerning the end of life.

Translational autoregulation of thymidylate synthase and dihydrofolate reductase.

The folate-dependent enzymes, thymidylate synthase (TS) and dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) are critical for providing the requisite nucleotide precursors for maintaining DNA synthesis and DNA repair. In addition to their essential roles in enzyme catalysis, these two enzymes have now been shown to function as RNA binding proteins. Using in vitro and in vivo experimental model systems, we have shown that the functional consequence of binding of TS protein to its own cognate mRNA, as well as binding of DHFR to its own DHFR mRNA, is translational repression.

Thymidylate synthase as a translational regulator of cellular gene expression.

Studies from our laboratory have shown that the folate-dependent enzyme, thymidylate synthase (TS), functions as an RNA binding protein. There is evidence that TS, in addition to interacting with its own TS mRNA, forms a ribonucleoprotein complex with a number of other cellular mRNAs, including those corresponding to the p53 tumor suppressor gene and the myc family of transcription factors. Using both in vitro and in vivo model systems, we have demonstrated that the functional consequence of binding of TS protein to its own cognate mRNA, as well as binding of TS to the p53 mRNA, is translational repression.