T cell immunoglobulin mucin (TIM) family plays a key role in regulating immune re-sponses.In this study,the interactions of human TIM family with apoptotic cells were evaluated in order to provide a foundation for fur...T cell immunoglobulin mucin (TIM) family plays a key role in regulating immune re-sponses.In this study,the interactions of human TIM family with apoptotic cells were evaluated in order to provide a foundation for further study on the roles of human TIM genes in apoptosis.Nine kinds of pEGFP-N1 eukaryotic expression vectors containing different lengths of the three members of human TIM genes for the expression of TIM-EGFP and the vectors for the expression of TIM-Fc fusion pro-teins were constructed.It was found that human TIM proteins could recognize and bind to apoptotic cells directly,but not to viable cells.The interactions of sTIM-1-EGFP,sTIM-3-EGFP and sTIM-4-EGFP with apoptotic cells were blocked by TIM-1-Ig,TIM-3-Ig and TIM-4-Ig fusion proteins respectively.In addition,human TIM proteins mediated the recognition of apoptotic cells and bound to apoptotic cells directly via the IgV domains.In conclusion,the TIM family may play a key role in the regulation of apoptosis.Our data also suggest that human TIM proteins probably serve as novel proteins for the detection of the early cellular apoptosis.展开更多
基金supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30672008)
文摘T cell immunoglobulin mucin (TIM) family plays a key role in regulating immune re-sponses.In this study,the interactions of human TIM family with apoptotic cells were evaluated in order to provide a foundation for further study on the roles of human TIM genes in apoptosis.Nine kinds of pEGFP-N1 eukaryotic expression vectors containing different lengths of the three members of human TIM genes for the expression of TIM-EGFP and the vectors for the expression of TIM-Fc fusion pro-teins were constructed.It was found that human TIM proteins could recognize and bind to apoptotic cells directly,but not to viable cells.The interactions of sTIM-1-EGFP,sTIM-3-EGFP and sTIM-4-EGFP with apoptotic cells were blocked by TIM-1-Ig,TIM-3-Ig and TIM-4-Ig fusion proteins respectively.In addition,human TIM proteins mediated the recognition of apoptotic cells and bound to apoptotic cells directly via the IgV domains.In conclusion,the TIM family may play a key role in the regulation of apoptosis.Our data also suggest that human TIM proteins probably serve as novel proteins for the detection of the early cellular apoptosis.
