Fit for Purpose Assessment: A New Direction for IACUCs.

The organization and function of the institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) is the key component of government regulation and oversight of necessary scientific research using live animals and of AAALAC - International accreditation of animal care and use programs in the United States. The regulations, roles, and responsibilities of IACUCs have evolved since their inception 35 years ago from a limited focus on animal welfare and specific animal procedures to embracing scientific quality, data reproducibility and translation, and animal welfare as inextricably interdependent and critical components of generation of new scientific knowledge and medical treatments. A current challenge for IACUCs is in evaluating whether benefits to be derived (eg, new knowledge or treatments) justify any unavoidable pain, stress, or injury associated with proposed research protocols, because the former are long-term and at best speculative outcomes, whereas the latter are immediate and tangible for the study animals.

Veterinary education: a basis for good governance leading to effective veterinary services.

Veterinary education serves as the foundation on which a country can build effective Veterinary Services (VS). In addition, an appropriately well-educated animal health workforce will be better poised to actively participate in and advance good governance practices. Good governance, in turn, will lead to improved animal and veterinary public heath infrastructures and help advance economic development across the globe.

Activation and regulation of store-operated calcium entry.

The process of store-operated Ca(2+) entry (SOCE), whereby Ca(2+) influx across the plasma membrane is activated in response to depletion of intracellular Ca(2+) stores in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), has been under investigation for greater than 25 years; however, only in the past 5 years have we come to understand this mechanism at the molecular level. A surge of recent experimentation indicates that STIM molecules function as Ca(2+) sensors within the ER that, upon Ca(2+) store depletion, rearrange to sites very near to the plasma membrane. At these plasma membrane-ER junctions, STIM interacts with and activates SOCE channels of the Orai family.

Phosphorylation of STIM1 underlies suppression of store-operated calcium entry during mitosis.

Store-operated Ca(2+) entry (SOCE) and Ca(2+) release-activated Ca(2+) currents (I(crac)) are strongly suppressed during cell division, the only known physiological situation in which Ca(2+) store depletion is uncoupled from the activation of Ca(2+) influx [corrected]. We found that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca(2+) sensor STIM1 failed to rearrange into near-plasma membrane puncta in mitotic cells, a critical step in the SOCE-activation pathway. We also found that STIM1 from mitotic cells is recognized by the phospho-specific MPM-2 antibody, suggesting that STIM1 is phosphorylated during mitosis.