Water availability is a critical determinant for the growth and ecological distribution of terrestrial plants. Although some xerophytes are unique regarding their highly developed root architecture and the successful adaptation to arid environments, virtually nothing is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying this adaptation. Here, we report physiological and molecular responses of wild watermelon (Citrullus lanatus sp.), which exhibits extraordinarily high drought resistance. At the early stage of drought stress, root development of wild watermelon was significantly enhanced compared with that of the irrigated plants, indicating the activation of a drought avoidance mechanism for absorbing water from deep soil layers. Consistent with this observation, comparative proteome analysis revealed that many proteins induced in the early stage of drought stress are involved in root morphogenesis and carbon/nitrogen metabolism, which may contribute to the drought avoidance via the enhancement of root growth. On the other hand, lignin synthesis-related proteins and molecular chaperones, which may function in the enhancement of physical desiccation tolerance and maintenance of protein integrity, respectively, were induced mostly at the later stage of drought stress. Our findings suggest that this xerophyte switches survival strategies from drought avoidance to drought tolerance during the progression of drought stress, by regulating its root proteome in a temporally programmed manner. This study provides new insights into the complex molecular networks within plant roots involved in the adaptation to adverse environments.

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Autotaxin (ATX) is a tumour cell motility-stimulating factor originally isolated from melanoma cell supernatants. ATX is identical to lysophospholipase D, which produces a bioactive lipid mediator, lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), from lysophosphatidylcholine. ATX is overexpressed in various malignancies, including Hodgkin lymphoma, and ATX may stimulate tumour progression via LPA production. The present study measured the serum ATX antigen levels in patients with haematological malignancies using a recently developed automated enzyme immunoassay. The serum ATX antigen levels in patients with B-cell neoplasms, especially follicular lymphoma (FL), were higher than those in healthy subjects. Serum ATX antigen levels in FL patients were associated with tumour burden and changed in parallel with the patients' clinical courses. The serum ATX antigen levels were little affected by inflammation, unlike the soluble interleukin-2 receptor and beta2-microglobulin levels. As expected, the plasma LPA levels in FL patients were correlated with the serum ATX antigen levels. Given that leukaemic tumour cells from FL patients expressed ATX, the shedding of ATX from lymphoma cells probably leads to the elevation of serum ATX antigen levels. Our results suggest that the serum ATX antigen level may be a promising and novel marker for FL.

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ObjectivesThe Mycoses Forum in Japan has developed management bundles for candidaemia to incorporate into bedside practice. The aim of this study was to investigate nationwide compliance with the bundles and their impact on clinical outcomes.MethodsNon-neutropenic patients treated with antifungals for candidaemia were surveyed. Bundles consist of nine items to complete. Data were sent to the central office between July 2011 and April 2012.ResultsSix hundred and eight patients were analysed. The compliance rate for achieving all elements was 6.9%, and it increased to 21.4% when compliance was analysed by the bundle except for oral switch. There was a significant difference in clinical success between patients with and without compliance [92.9% versus 75.8% (P = 0.011)]. Compliance with the bundles, however, failed to be an independent factor associated with favourable outcomes. When step-down oral therapy was excluded from the elements of compliance, compliance with the bundles was revealed to be an independent predictor of clinical success (OR 4.42, 95% CI 2.05–9.52) and mortality (OR 0.27, 95% CI 0.13–0.57). Independent individual elements contributing to clinical success were removal of central venous catheters within 24 h, assessment of clinical efficacy on the third to the fifth day and at least 2 weeks of therapy after clearance of candidaemia.ConclusionsCompliance with the bundles for candidaemia had a beneficial effect on clinical outcomes. Promotion of the bundles approach may have the potential to narrow the gap between clinical evidence and bedside practice.

Diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) and protein kinase C (PKC) are two distinct enzyme families associated with diacylglycerol. Both enzymes have cysteine-rich C1 domains (C1A, C1B, and C1C) in the regulatory region. Although most PKC C1 domains strongly bind phorbol esters, there has been no direct evidence that DGK C1 domains bind phorbol esters. We synthesized 11 cysteine-rich sequences of DGK C1 domains with good sequence homology to those of the PKC C1 domains. Among them, only DGK␥-C1A and DGK␤-C1A exhibited significant binding to phorbol 12,13-dibutyrate (PDBu). Scatchard analysis of rat-DGK␥-C1A, human-DGK␥-C1A, and human-DGK␤-C1A gave K d values of 3.6, 2.8, and 14.6 nM, respectively, suggesting that DGK␥ and DGK␤ are new targets of phorbol esters. An A12T mutation of human-DGK␤-C1A enhanced the affinity to bind PDBu, indicating that the ␤-hydroxyl group of Thr-12 significantly contributes to the binding. The K d value for PDBu of FLAG-tagged whole rat-DGK␥ (4.4 nM) was nearly equal to that of rat-DGK␥-C1A (3.6 nM). Moreover, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol 13-acetate induced the irreversible translocation of whole rat-DGK␥ and its C1B deletion mutant, not the C1A deletion mutant, from the cytoplasm to the plasma membrane of CHO-K1 cells. These results indicate that 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol 13-acetate binds to C1A of DGK␥ to cause its translocation.Diacylglycerol kinase (DGK) 1 and protein kinase C (PKC) both interact with the second messenger diacylglycerol (DG) (1, 2). DGK phosphorylates DG to produce phosphatidic acid, whereas PKC is allosterically activated by DG in the presence of phosphatidylserine. Therefore, DGK may inhibit the activation of PKC by attenuating DG levels, contributing to the regulation of intracellular signal transduction.To date, nine subtypes of mammalian DGKs have been cloned (3-15). All DGK isozymes consist of a conserved catalytic domain and two or three cysteine-rich C1 domains designated as C1A, C1B, and C1C (16). These isozymes are classified into five classes according to the other functional domains (Fig. 1). The class I isozymes (DGK␣, -␤, and -␥) have calcium binding domains (EF-hands). The class II isozymes (DGK␦ and -) have a pleckstrin homology domain at the N terminus, and their catalytic region is split into two domains unlike the other DGK isozymes. DGK⑀ has a simple structure and is classified as a class III isozyme. The class IV isozymes DGK and have a myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate homology domain and four ankyrin repeats. DGK , which has three C1 domains unlike other DGK and PKC isozymes, is the only isozyme in class V.The similarity between DGK and PKC isozymes in structure is in the cysteine-rich C1 domains. Recent investigations using NMR spectroscopy and x-ray crystallography have revealed the three-dimensional structure of C1B domains of PKC␣, PKC␥,. Each PKC C1 domain has six conserved cysteines and two histidines in the typical core structure HX 12 CX 2 CX 13-14 CX 2 CX 4 HX 2 CX 7 C (where X is any amino acid) that coordinates two atoms of zinc in...

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