Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P10415 (Bcl-2)
 33,771 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Obesity causes its complications through functional and morphologic damage to remotely situated tissues via undetermined mechanisms. In one rodent model of obesity, the Zucker diabetic fatty fa/fa rat, overaccumulation of triglycerides in the pancreatic islets may be responsible for a gradual depletion of beta cells, leading to the most common complication of obesity, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. At the onset of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, the islets from fa/fa rats contain up to 100 times the fat content of islets from normal lean rats. Ultimately, about 75% of the beta cells disappear from these fat-laden islets as a consequence of apoptosis induced by long-chain fatty acids (FA). Here we quantify Bcl-2, the anti-apoptosis factor in these islets, and find that Bcl-2 mRNA and protein are, respectively, 85% and 70% below controls. In normal islets cultured in 1 mM FA, Bcl-2 mRNA declined by 68% and completely disappeared in fa/fa islets cultured in FA. In both groups, suppression was completely blocked by the fatty acyl-CoA synthetase inhibitor, triacsin C, evidence of its mediation by fatty acyl-CoA. To determine whether leptin action blocked FA-induced apoptosis, we cultured normal and fa/fa islets in 1 mM FA with or without leptin. Leptin completely blocked FA-induced Bcl-2 suppression in normal islets but had no effect on islets from fa/fa rats, which are unresponsive to leptin because of a mutation in their leptin receptors (OB-R). However, when wild-type OB-R is overexpressed in fa/fa islets, leptin completely prevented FA-induced Bcl-2 suppression and DNA fragmentation.
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PMID:Protection against lipoapoptosis of beta cells through leptin-dependent maintenance of Bcl-2 expression. 968 19

Fatty acid-CoA ligase 4 (FACL4) is a central enzyme controlling the unesterified free arachidonic acid (AA) level in cells and the free AA is known to induce apoptosis. We have recently reported that expression of FACL4 is upregulated in about 40% of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and 50% of HCC cell lines, suggesting that FACL4 may be involved in liver carcinogenesis. In this study, we investigated whether HCC cell growth is regulated by FACL4. Immunoblot analysis showed that SNU 398 cells express very low or no detectable level of FACL4. We, therefore, transfected the SNU 398 cells with FACL4 expression vector, and clones expressing FACL4 were pooled and analyzed. We found that forced expression of FACL4 in SNU 398 promotes the growth of cells. In addition, we observed that triacsin C, a FACL4 inhibitor, inhibits the growth of Hep 3B cell line which expresses high level of endogenous FACL4. We also found that the triacsin C-mediated growth inhibition in Hep 3B cells results from the induction of apoptosis with evidence of Bcl-2 reduction. Altogether, our data show that FACL4 affects HCC cell growth and suggest that modulation of FACL4 expression/activity is an approach for treatment of HCC.
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PMID:Regulation of cell growth by fatty acid-CoA ligase 4 in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells. 1793 35