C O M M E N T
Horizons
No flies on us
ecent research has focussed on
R how the acquired immune
response to infectious agents is
switched on. The innate immune
system is thought to be triggered
b y pathogen-specific signals and,
subsequently, induces activation
of the acquired immune response
through the induction of expression
of co-stimulatory molecules and
cytokines by antigen-presenting
cells (APCs). By comparing flies,
plants and vertebrates, a possible
new signalling route between the
two branches of the immune re-
sponse has been discovered. The
Drosophila protein Toll (dToll)
functions in the fruit fly antifungal
immune response, and its cyto-
plasmic signalling domain has
been shown to have a homologue
in a human expressed-sequence tag
(EST) database. This sequence has
been used to pull out the full-length
cDNA human homologue of Toll
(hToll) from a spleen library. Like
dToll, it is a type I transmembrane
protein with an extracellular do-
main consisting of leucine-rich re-
peat domains and a cytoplasmic
Mariner sets sail
cloned copy of mariner (a trans-
A posable genetic element found
in a wide variety of organisms from
flies to worms to humans) isolated
from Drosophila mauritiana has
been shown to be capable of effi-
ciently transposing in Leishmania
major, a trypanosomatid proto-
zoan from an entirely different king-
dom. Gueiros-Filho and Beverley
have introduced two plasmids into
Leishmania: one carrying the Mosl
mariner element from Drosophila,
and the other carrying the M o s l
transposase engineered for opti-
mal expression. Remarkably, -20%
of the dual transformants gave rise
to new transposition events. As
expected, the newly inserted
copies were flanked by 'TA' target
site duplications and otherwise
resembled mariner transposition
If you would like to suggest papers for inclusion in Horizons,
please e-mail: tlm@elsevler.co.uk
Copyright © 1997 Elsevier ScienceLtd. All rights reserved.0966 842X/97/$17.00
TRENDS IN MICROBIOLO(;Y
domain homologous to the human
interleukin 1 (IL-1) receptor cyto-
plasmic domain, and it is expressed
in human monocytes, macrophages,
dendritic cells, y/6 T cells, T h l and
Th2 (~/[3T cells and a B-cell line. A
dominant-positive mutant of hToll
has been created, which, on trans-
fection into a monocyte line, induces
the expression of the proinflamma-
tory cytokines IL-1 and IL-8 and
the co-stimulatory molecule B7.1
through induction of nuclear factor
•B (NF-KB). Although the ligand
for this receptor is not known, the
finding that hToll induces expres-
sion of NF-KB-controlled immune
response genes provides a clear link-
age, through the action of APCs
such as macrophages and dendritic
cells, between the innate and ac-
quired immune systems in the fight
against infectious agents.
Medzhitov, R., Preston-Hurlburt, P.
and Janeway, C.A. (11997) A human
homologue of the Drosophila Toll
protein signals activation of adaptive
immunity, Nature 388,394-397
Barbara Blacklaws
e-mail: bab2@cam.ac.uk
events in Drosophila. These re-
sults provide direct evidence that
mariner is not reliant on a specific
host for transpositional compe-
tence, and they also fit the hypoth-
esis that mariner became wide-
spread among diverse organisms
by horizontal transfer between
hosts. They also demonstrate that
mariner is a useful genetic tool
for transposon-tagging studies in
organisms, such as Leishmania,
that have poorly developed trans-
poson tools.
Gueiros-Filho, F.J. and Beverley, S.M.
(1997) Trans-kingdom transposition
of the Drosophila element mariner
within the protozoan Leishmania,
Science 276, 1716-1719
Scott E. Devine
e-mail: devine@welchlink.welch.
jhu.edu
341 V()L. 5 NO.
Microbial genomics
TIGR releases genome data
At the end of June, the Institute for Genome
Research (TIGR) broke off its relationship with
the commercial enterprise Human Genome
Sciences and, subsequently, placed two dozen
megabases of microbial genome sequence data
into the public domain (http://www.tigr.
org/press__release.html). These data, in
cluding the complete genomes of Helicobacter
pylori and Archaeoglobus fulgidus and partial
data on eight species of Eubacteria, are avail-
able on the TIGR FTP server ( f t p ' / / f t p .
t i g r . o r g / p u b / d a t a ) and can be searched
using the new version of TBLASTN (producing
gapped alignments) on the NCBI server (http:
//www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/cgi-bin/BLAST/
nph-tigrbl). TIGR's Mycobacterium tuber-
culosis genomic data (from a clinical isolate)
can be searched, together with that from the
Sanger Centre (from the lab strain H37Rv- see
http: //w~-~. sanger, ac. uk/Proj ects/M_
tuberculosis/), using B L A S T N at the South
African National Bioinformatics Institute
(http: / / ziggy, sanbi, ac. za/tb/tbsearch.
htm)
PEDANT (protein extraction, description and
analysis tool)
Dmitrij Frishman and Hans-Werner Mewes of
the Munich Information Centre for Protein
Sequences have recently launched a new Web
site devoted to the computational analysis of
complete genomes ( h t t p : / / p e d a n t . m i p s .
biochem, mpg. de/frishman/pedant, html).
Seven complete and two partial genomic se-
quences have been analysed so far, cataloguing
open reading frames according to a range of
predicted structural and functional features
and by homology. The site makes ample use of
frames and hypertext links between database
entries and contains links to other sites relevant
to each genome. However, the biological sig-
nificance of the data is not discussed.
Rbizobium 0.5 Mb plasmid pNGR234a
The complete sequence of this plasmid, respon-
sible for the symbiosis between Rhizobium
and legumes, has recently been determined
(http: //genome. imb-j ena. de/-cfreiber/
pNGR234a2 .html or http: //www. ncbi.
nlm. nih. gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?
form=4&db--n&terr~-pNGR234a&dispmax=50 ).
Those with an interest in the bacterial patho-
genesis might be interested to note that the plas-
mid encodes a type III secretion system, the
protein sequences of which can be retrieved
from http: //www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/htbin-
post/Entrez/query? form=6 &db=n&UID=21
82741,2182727,2182716 &dopt=p&dispmax
=30.
Freiberg, C. et al. (1997) Molecularbasis of symbiosis
betweenRbizobiumand legumes,Nature387, 394-401
Mark Pallen
e-mail: m.pallen@qmw.ac.uk
9 SEPTEMBER 1997