Mahoney William M, Schwartz Stephen M
Department of Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-7335, USA.
J Clin Invest. 2005 Feb;115(2):221-4. doi: 10.1172/JCI24272.
For 3 decades, terms such as synthetic phenotype and contractile phenotype have been used to imply the existence of a specific mechanism for smooth muscle cell (SMC) responses to injury. In this issue of the JCI, Hendrix et al. offer a far more precise approach to examining the mechanisms of SMC responses to injury, focused not on general changes in phenotype but on effects of injury on a single promoter element, the CArG [CC(A/T)6GG] box, in a single gene encoding smooth muscle (SM) alpha-actin. Since CArG box structures are present in some, but not all, SMC genes, these data suggest that we may be progressing toward establishing a systematic, molecular classification of both SMC subsets and the response of SMCs to different injuries.
三十年来，诸如合成表型和收缩表型等术语一直被用来暗示平滑肌细胞（SMC）对损伤作出反应存在特定机制。在本期《临床研究杂志》中，亨德里克斯等人提供了一种更为精确的方法来研究SMC对损伤的反应机制，其重点并非表型的一般变化，而是损伤对单个启动子元件——即位于编码平滑肌（SM）α-肌动蛋白的单个基因中的CArG [CC(A/T)6GG] 框——的影响。由于CArG框结构并非存在于所有SMC基因中，而仅存在于部分基因中，这些数据表明我们可能正在朝着建立SMC亚群以及SMC对不同损伤反应的系统分子分类方向迈进。
