Sumoylation, the covalent conjugation of a small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) to a target protein, is a cell signalling mechanism involved in the regulation of essential cellular and developmental processes such as nucleus-cytoplasm shuttling, apoptosis or transcription (Hayashi et al., 2002; Pichler and Melchior, 2002; Seufert et al., 1995; Wilson and Rangasamy, 2001).
DNA methylation, operated by a family of DNA methyltransferases [ 5], is implicated in many life-essential cellular and developmental processes, such as embryonic reprogramming, cellular differentiation, silencing of genes and transposons, parental imprinting, X chromosome inactivation, and genomic stability [ 6– 8].
Immunology, as one of the most rapidly evolving fields in biomedical research, has to date covered the essential cellular and molecular events necessary for immune responses to occur, but has paid relatively little attention to important developmental processes underlying the formation of the tissues themselves that carry out immune responses in humans and other mammalians.
While it is clear that LIS1 is essential for multiple cellular and developmental events, the cerebral cortical-specific mechanism that is distinctive from the housekeeping functions of LIS1 is yet to be defined.
Recent work in a Korean population also demonstrates genetic association of the TRAF1 region with RA [ 76]. miRNAs are recently discovered regulators of gene expression and represent a class of noncoding RNA molecules essential in many cellular and developmental processes, including immune responses and inflammation.
Microtubules are one of the major cytoskeletal components of neurons, essential for many fundamental cellular and developmental processes, such as neuronal migration, polarity, and differentiation.
Transcription is an essential component of basic cellular and developmental processes.
These observations suggest that conserved miRNAs may be essential for controlling basic cellular and developmental pathways (e.g. cell cycle) in plants.
Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.
Center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering, Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
The conclusion, said Kenneth Krauter, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Colorado, was "irrefutable".
