Communications between bone cells and hematopoietic stem cells.

The skeletal system, while characterized by a hard tissue component, is in fact an extraordinarily dynamic system, with disparate functions ranging from structural support, movement and locomotion and soft-organ protection, to the maintenance of calcium homeostasis. Amongst these functions, it has long been known that mammalian bones house definitive hematopoiesis. In fact, several data demonstrate that the bone microenvironment provides essential regulatory cues to the hematopoietic system. In particular, interactions between the bone-forming cells, or osteoblasts, and the most primitive Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSC) have recently been defined. This review will focus mainly on the role of osteoblasts as HSC regulatory cells, discussing the signaling mechanisms and molecules currently thought to be involved in their modulation of HSC behavior. We will then review additional cellular components of the HSC niche, including endothelial cells and osteoclasts. Finally, we will discuss the potential clinical implications of our emerging understanding of the complex HSC microenvironment.

Is polyploidy an important genotoxic lesion?

The importance of polyploidy as a genotoxic lesion is uncertain and there have been few publications and no reviews which have included data on spontaneous or induced polyploidy in routine genotoxicity screening. We have attempted to clarify some of the issues by reviewing the published literature and by reference to our historical data base for metaphase analysis of cultured human lymphocytes. In our studies on pharmaceutical compounds polyploidy was the lesion most often found, being induced by approximately 40% of the compounds tested. The mean spontaneous frequency was between 0.1 and 0.3%, and values for polyploidy induction were 5-fold to > 100-fold the spontaneous value. Spontaneous polyploids tended to be near-exact multiples of the haploid chromosome number whereas induced 'polyploids' were, in fact, very heteroploid with a wide range of chromosome numbers. Polyploidy induction often occurred at non-toxic concentrations, usually there were well defined no-effect (threshold) levels and it was unrelated to other genetic effects. Such observations would be expected for inducers of polyploidy because the target molecules are not DNA and for these non-DNA targets there is usually a degree of redundancy. Therefore, inducers of polyploidy are only likely to be a hazard for humans if they are positive at or below therapeutic concentrations. We conclude that polyploidy/near-polyploidy (shown as 'polyploidy' throughout) should be scored as accessory data which becomes important only when induction occurs at therapeutic levels.

Purification and preliminary characterization of alcohol dehydrogenase from Aspergillus nidulans.

Aspergillus alcohol dehydrogenase is produced in response to growth in the presence of a wide variety of inducers, of which the most effective are short-chain alcohols and ketones, e.g. butan-2-one and propan-2-ol. The enzyme can be readily extracted from fresh or freeze-dried cells and purified to homogeneity on Blue Sepharose in a single step by using specific elution with NAD+ and pyrazole. The pure enzyme has Mr 290 000 by electrophoresis or gel filtration; it is a homopolymer with subunit Mr 37 500 by electrophoresis in sodium dodecyl sulphate; its amino acid composition corresponds to Mr 37 900, and the native enzyme contains one zinc atom per subunit. The enzyme is NAD-specific and has a wide substrate activity in the forward and reverse reactions; its activity profile is not identical with those of other alcohol dehydrogenases.

The purification of urease from Aspergillus nidulans.

A purification procedure is described for Aspergillus urease, the most important step being affinity chromatography on hydroxyurea Sepharose. The enzyme exists as a single active species of Mr 240,000. The pure enzyme has an activity of 670 mumol urea hydrolysed/min, has a Km of 10(-3) M, an optimum pH of 8.5 and a sub-unit Mr of 40,000.