Shedding Light on Animal Cryptochromes 英文参考文献.docVIP

Shedding Light on Animal Cryptochromes Kira E. O’Day | doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060168 Anyone who’s neglected a houseplant for any length of time knows that plants can’t survive without light. But it’s more complicated than that; in addition to serving as an energy source, light is used by plants as a signal to sense and respond to the environment. For example, both red and blue light send the signal for maturation and flower and seed development. Depriving a plant of such light signals disrupts a variety of growth processes such as early seedling development, leaf and stem expansion, and initiation of flowering, as well as circadian clock entrainment. Cryptochromes are photoreceptor proteins used by plants to mediate the effects of blue light; they are also found in animals like flies and mice, where they help to regulate the circadian clock. In plants, exposure to blue light results in the reduction (gain of electrons) of flavin pigments that are bound by the cryptochrome. Blue light activates plant cryptochromes by reducing the flavins, but researchers weren’t sure exactly how blue light activates fly cryptochromes, or if doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060168.g001 mammalian cryptochromes even respond to light at all. Using biophysical techniques to monitor cryptochrome blue light photoreceptors in living cells as they undergo a chemical redox reaction in response to light, researchers show that cryptochromes share similar properties in organisms ranging from plants to higher animals and humans. In a new study, Nathalie Hoang et al. set out to determine how animal cryptochromes respond to blue light, and if mammalian cryptochromes are capable of blue light activation. The researchers performed a series of experiments to measure the effects of blue light irradiation on cryptochromes in living flies and in insect cell lines (Sf21) expressing high levels of fly or human cryptochrome (Dmcry and Hscry1, respectively). They found that not only is the bound flavin molecu