Talanta 1961, 7:163–174.CrossRef 24. Pomerantsev AP, Pomerantseva OM, Leppla SH: A spontaneous translational fusion of Bacillus cereus PlcR and PapR activates transcription of PlcR-dependent genes in Bacillus anthracis via binding with a specific

palindromic sequence. Infect Immun 2004,72(10):5814–5823.PubMedCrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions JE performed experiments, developed and performed analyses and assays, analyzed the data and contributed to the writing. YJ and CD designed the research, discussed the results and wrote the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background AZD0156 price Anandamide [1] is a mammalian endogenous lipid that binds cannabinoid receptors which are mainly present in the central nervous system and immune cells. Anandamide was identified in 1992 and named after the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning bliss or delight. Anandamide acts as an agonist for the central cannabinoid receptor (CB1) and is therefore referred to as cannabinoid. It mimics pharmacological effects of Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol, an active ingredient of marijuana [2]. Action of anandamide is selleckchem terminated

by the enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) [3]. FAAH was originally identified in 1996 from rat liver plasma membrane and later FAAH homologs were identified from other sources including human, porcine, and Arabidopsis. FAAH belongs to a large group of proteins containing

a conserved amidase signature motif [4, 5]. FAAH can also hydrolyze, in addition to anandamide, other fatty acid derivatives like N-oleoylethanolamine Copanlisib chemical structure and N-palmitoylethanolamine collectively referred as N-acylethanolamines (NAEs) [6]. Studies on mammalian FAAH have provided more information on NAEs role in regulating Thiamine-diphosphate kinase various physiological functions like sleep and pain [7–9]. Recent studies on NAEs reveal further biological roles in appetite suppression, vasodilatation, cardiac function and inflammation [10–12]. Therefore any FAAH inhibitors which intervene in NAE’s bioactivity promise to be a novel class of therapeutics and much drug discovery research is being actively pursued in this regard [13, 14]. Anandamide is yet to be found in Dictyostelium, but its precursor N-acylphosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE) has previously been identified [15]. In mammalian cells anandamide is believed to originate from hydrolysis of NAPE by phospholipase D (PLD). In Dictyostelium, a PLD homolog PldB was identified and proposed to have a similar function [16]. Identification of FAAH suggests that regulation of NAE signalling could occur in Dictyostelium and thus Dictyostelium could be utilised as a simple eukaryotic model to study NAE functions in parallel with mammalian systems. Dictyostelium has been used to study cell motility, chemotaxis, cell differentiation and morphogenesis enabling significant contributions to an understanding of similar processes in mammalian systems.