S28 of ICCPB2011

Organizers:

Koichi Ozaki (Fac. of Life and Environ. Sci., Shimane Univ., Japan)
Mamiko Ozaki (Grad. Schl. of Sci., Kobe Univ., Japan)

Lipid is an important component of biomembranes as well as major substance for metabolic energy store. Lipophilic vitamins and hormones are also indispensable for various physiological regulations. Because lipid and lipophilic substances are insoluble in aquatic environment such as body fluid and cytoplasm, water-soluble proteins that carry lipophilic molecules are essential for their transport and physiological actions, and thus have been attracting considerable attention of researchers in the wide field of physiology and biochemistory. For example, several kinds of lipophilic substance-binding proteins have been found to function in the chemosensory reception both in the vertebrate and invertebrate animals. In vision, vitamin A-binding proteins are essential for the synthesis of visual pigments, and dysfunction of these proteins causes blindness in various animals. For the lipid transport in blood and hemolymph, particular lipoproteins have been identified in vertebrate and insects, respectively, each having unique characteristics. Like these, a lot of studies on the lipophilic substance-binding proteins have been conducted extensively, and elucidated a wide variety of physiological functions of these proteins. However, recent increase of knowledge in this field is extremely rapid, which therefore requires comprehensive and comparative discussion for further development of the research in this field. The aim of this symposium is to compare knowledge obtained from various kinds of lipophilic substance-binding proteins found in a variety of animals, and to integrate them comprehensively in order to find new lines of study that show promise in future development.

Speakers:

1) Koichi Ozaki (Shimane Univ., Japan)
Retinoid-binding proteins involved in the insect photoreception.

2) Ken Sawada1, Tadashi Nakamura2, Tatsuo Iwasa1 (1Muroran Inst. Tech., 2Univ. Electro-Commun., Japan)
Lipocalin family proteins found in the olfactory epithelium of Japanese common newt.

3) Takashi Matsuo (Tokyo Metropolitan Univ., Japan)
Evolution of two odorant-binding protein genes, Obp57d and Obp57e, in Drosophila

4) Jean-Francois Picimbon (Shandong Acad. Agricult. Sci., China)
Comparative biochemistry and physiology of moth OBPs and CSPs

5) Takahiro Shiotsuki, Rintaro Suzuki, Zui Fujimoto, Mitsuru Momma, Wataru Tsuchiya, Akira Tase, Mitsuhiro Miyazawa, Toshimasa Yamazaki (National Inst. of Agrobiol. Sci., Japan)
Structural analysis of hemolymph juvenile hormone-binding protein of silkworm, Bombyx mori.