0000000000605778
AUTHOR
Ruth Frommolt
Sleeping Beauty transposon system – future trend in T-cell-based gene therapies?
Evaluation of: Huang X, Wilber AC, Bao L et al.: Stable gene transfer and expression in human primary T cells by the Sleeping Beauty transposon system. Blood 107, 483–491 (2006). The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system can mediate stable gene transfer and expression in primary human T cells. Optimal in vitro conditions for maximum gene transfer efficiencies have been developed with regard to further application of the SB transposon system in T cell based gene therapies. This raises the question of whether or not the SB transposon system is a convincing alternative for virus-mediated gene transfer based on the currently available data. Here, we will discuss controversial safety and effic…
Ancient recruitment by chromists of green algal genes encoding enzymes for carotenoid biosynthesis.
Chromist algae (stramenopiles, cryptophytes, and haptophytes) are major contributors to marine primary productivity. These eukaryotes acquired their plastid via secondary endosymbiosis, whereby an early-diverging red alga was engulfed by a protist and the plastid was retained and its associated nuclear-encoded genes were transferred to the host genome. Current data suggest, however, that chromists are paraphyletic; therefore, it remains unclear whether their plastids trace back to a single secondary endosymbiosis or, alternatively, this organelle has resulted from multiple independent events in the different chromist lineages. Both scenarios, however, predict that plastid-targeted, nucleus-…