Bcl-xL is a well characterized death-suppressing molecule of the Bcl-2 family. Bcl-xL is expressed in embryonic and adult neurons of the CNS and may play a critical role in preventing neuronal apoptosis that occurs during brain development or results from diverse pathologic stimuli, including cerebral ischemia. In this study, we used a novel approach to study the potential neuroprotective effec...

The 3' noncoding region (3' NCR) of flaviviruses contains secondary and tertiary structures essential for virus replication. Previous studies of yellow fever virus (YFV) and dengue virus have found that modifications to the 3' NCR are sometimes associated with attenuation in vertebrate and/or mosquito hosts. The 3' NCRs of 117 isolates of South American YFV have been examined, and major deletio...

Both Bcl-xL and Bcl-2, antiapoptotic members of the Bcl family, are found in prostate cancer cell lines. Although these proteins may have similar antiapoptotic functions, it is not clear to what extent each serves as an antiapoptotic effector in prostate cancer cells. We engineered LNCaP and PC-3 cells to overexpress Bcl-xL protein and demonstrated that this desensitized them to the effects of ...

One of the transcription-independent mechanisms of the tumor suppressor p53 discovered in recent years involves physical interaction between p53 and proteins of the Bcl-2 family. In this paper, significant differences between the interaction of p53 with Mcl-1 and Bcl-xL were demonstrated by NMR spectroscopy and isothermal titration calorimetry. Bcl-xL was found to bind strongly to the p53 DNA-b...

Beclin-1, originally identified as a Bcl-2 binding protein, is an evolutionarily conserved protein required for autophagy. The direct interaction between Beclin-1 and Bcl-2 or Bcl-xL provides a potential convergence point for apoptosis and autophagy, two programmed cell death processes. Given the functional significance of the interaction between Beclin-1 and Bcl-2/Bcl-xL, we performed detailed...

How most apoptotic stimuli trigger mitochondrial dysfunction remains to be resolved. We screened the entire Bcl-2 network for its involvement in DNA damage-induced apoptosis in HeLa cells. Although the anti-apoptotic member Bcl-xL served as a major suppressor, apoptosis initiated only when both Mcl-1 and Bcl-xL were eliminated. The pro-apoptotic members Bak, Bad, Bim, and Noxa were required for...

bcl-xL, a member of the Bcl-2 family, exerts an antiapoptotic effect on lymphocytes. To assess its clinical significance in patients with follicular lymphoma, realtime quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of bcl-xL gene expression was investigated in whole lymph node sections and laser-microdissected lymphoma cells of 27 patients. Compared with 10 patie...

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most common and aggressive form of tumor of the central nervous system. Despite significant efforts to improve treatments, patient survival rarely exceeds 18 months largely due to the highly chemoresistant nature of these tumors. Importantly, misregulation of the apoptotic machinery plays a key role in the development of drug resistance. We previously demons...

Anti-apoptotic proteins are suggested to be important for the normal health of neurons and synapses as well as for resilience to stress. In order to determine whether stressful events may influence the expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-xL in the midbrain and specifically in the midbrain serotonergic (5-HT) neurons involved in neurobehavioral responses to adverse stimuli, adult male rats ...