NF-kappaB regulates the stability and activity of p73 by inducing its proteolytic degradation through a ubiquitin-dependent proteasome pathway.

Nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappaB), which exists as heterodimeric complexes composed of p50 and p65, has been shown to play an important role in cell survival processes. In the present study, we found for the first time that NF-kappaB has an ability to induce the ubiquitin-dependent proteasomal degradation of proapoptotic p73alpha. The activation of NF-kappaB in tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha)-stimulated H1299 cells resulted in a significant reduction in the amounts of the endogenous p73alpha. Consistent with these results, TNF-alpha-mediated downregulation of p73alpha was observed in wild-type (WT) mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) but not in p65-deficient MEFs. Ectopic expression of NF-kappaB decreased a half-life of p73alpha by increasing its ubiquitination levels, and thereby inhibiting the transcriptional activity as well as proapoptotic function of p73alpha, whereas NF-kappaB had undetectable effects on p53. Immunoprecipitation experiments demonstrated that, under our experimental conditions, NF-kappaB does not bind to p73alpha in mammalian cultured cells. In contrast to WT p65, the COOH-terminal deletion mutant of p65 (p65DeltaC) failed to reduce the expression levels of p73alpha, suggesting that NF-kappaB-mediated proteolytic degradation of p73alpha requires the transcriptional activity of NF-kappaB. Taken together, our present results imply that NF-kappaB-mediated degradation of proapoptotic p73 is a novel inhibitory mechanism of p73 that regulates cell survival and death.

Remarkably high asymmetric amplification in the chiral lanthanide complex-catalyzed hetero-Diels-Alder reaction: first example of the nonlinear effect in ML3 system

[reaction: see text] A remarkably high asymmetric amplification was realized in the Yb[(R)-BNP]3-catalyzed hetero-Diels-Alder reaction as the first example in the metal/chiral ligand 1:3 system. The mechanism may be explained by the autogenetic formation of the enantiopure complex as the most active catalyst. The enantiomer-discriminative formation of homochiral ML3 complexes is quite general within the lanthanide metal ions with similar ionic radii to that of the ytterbium ion.

Synthesis of enantiomerically pure C2-symmetric 4-pyrrolidinopyridine derivative as a chiral acyl transfer catalyst for the kinetic resolution of secondary alcohols

The first chiral C2-symmetric 4-pyrrolidinopyridine (PPY) derivative was synthesized in an enantiomerically pure form and successfully utilized as a chiral nucleophilic catalyst for the kinetic resolution of secondary alcohols leaving one enantiomer with high selectivity factors (up to s = 13.5).