The Toll/interleukin 1 receptor (TIR) domain is a region found in the cytoplasmic tails of members of the Toll-like receptor/interleukin-1 receptor superfamily. The domain is essential for signaling and is also found in the adaptor proteins Mal (MyD88 adaptor-like) and MyD88, which function to couple activation of the receptor to downstream signaling components. Experimental structures of two T...

AIMS Members of the Toll-like receptor (TLR) family initiate innate immune responses and were recently shown to play a role in atherosclerosis. However, the mechanisms that link TLR ligation to vascular inflammation and atherogenesis remain unclear. To identify which signalling pathways downstream of TLRs in immune cells are pro-atherogenic, we analysed the role of the TLR-specific adaptors MyD...

A major endocytic pathway initiates with the formation of clathrin-coated vesicles (CCVs) that transport cargo from the cell surface to endosomes. CCVs are distinguished by a polyhedral lattice of clathrin that coats the vesicle membrane and serves as a mechanical scaffold. Clathrin coats are assembled during vesicle formation from individual clathrin triskelia , the soluble form of clathrin co...

During spermatogenesis, the movement of germ cells across the seminiferous epithelium is associated with extensive junction restructuring. Yet the underlying mechanism (or mechanisms) that regulates these events is largely unknown. If the molecular architecture of the cell-cell actin-based adherens junction (AJ), such as ectoplasmic specialization (ES) and tubulobulbar complex- two testis-speci...

Crk family adaptors, consisting of Src homology 2 (SH2) and SH3 protein-binding domains, mediate assembly of protein complexes in signaling. CrkI, an alternately spliced form of Crk, lacks the regulatory phosphorylation site and C-terminal SH3 domain present in CrkII and CrkL. We used gene silencing combined with mutational analysis to probe the role of Crk adaptors in platelet-derived growth-f...

We established a novel method, Gene Expression Profiling via Multigene Concatemers (MgC-GEP), to study multigene expression patterns simultaneously. This method consists of the following steps: (1) cDNA was obtained using specific reverse primers containing an adaptor. (2) During the initial 1-3 cycles of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the products containing universal adaptors with digestion...

Face identity aftereffects have been used to test theories of the neural coding underlying expert face recognition. Previous studies reported larger aftereffects for adaptors that are morphed further from the average face than for adaptors closer to the average, which appeared to support opponent coding along face-identity dimensions. However, only two levels were tested and it is not clear whe...