University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, USA.
Mol Cell Endocrinol. 2013 May 22;371(1-2):5-14. doi: 10.1016/j.mce.2012.10.023. Epub 2012 Oct 30.
The adrenal is a small gland that escaped anatomic notice until the 16th century, and whose essential role in physiology was not established until the mid 19th century. Early studies were confounded by failure to distinguish the effects of the cortex from those of the medulla, but advances in steroid chemistry permitted the isolation, characterization and synthesis of many steroids by the mid 20th century. Knowledge of steroid structures, radiolabeled steroid conversions, and the identification of accumulated urinary steroids in diseases of steroidogenesis permitted a generally correct description of the steroidogenic pathways, but one confounded by the failure to distinguish species-specific differences. The advent of cloning technologies and molecular genetics rapidly corrected and clarified the understanding of steroidogenic processes. Our laboratory in San Francisco was one of several contributing to this effort, focusing on human steroidogenic enzymes, the genetic disorders in their biosynthesis and the transcriptional and post-translational mechanisms regulating enzyme activity.
肾上腺是一个小腺体，直到 16 世纪才被解剖学注意到，其在生理学中的重要作用直到 19 世纪中叶才确立。早期的研究因未能区分皮质和髓质的作用而受到混淆，但类固醇化学的进步使得许多类固醇在 20 世纪中叶得以分离、鉴定和合成。对类固醇结构、放射性标记类固醇转化以及在类固醇生成疾病中积累的尿类固醇的鉴定，使得对类固醇生成途径的一般正确描述成为可能，但由于未能区分物种特异性差异而受到混淆。克隆技术和分子遗传学的出现迅速纠正并澄清了对类固醇生成过程的理解。我们在旧金山的实验室是为这项工作做出贡献的几个实验室之一，专注于人类类固醇生成酶、其生物合成中的遗传障碍以及调节酶活性的转录和翻译后机制。
