Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Sanità Pubblica, Università di Cagliari, 09042 Monserrato, Italy.
Department of Biology, College of Science and Technology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA.
Cells. 2024 Jun 27;13(13):1115. doi: 10.3390/cells13131115.
This review summarizes the results of a series of studies performed by our group with the aim to define the expression levels of thymosin β and thymosin β over time, starting from fetal development to different ages after birth, in different human organs and tissues. The first section describes the proteomics investigations performed on whole saliva from preterm newborns and gingival crevicular fluid, which revealed to us the importance of these acidic peptides and their multiple functions. These findings inspired us to start an in-depth investigation mainly based on immunochemistry to establish the distribution of thymosin β and thymosin β in different organs from adults and fetuses at different ages (after autopsy), and therefore to obtain suggestions on the functions of β-thymosins in health and disease. The functions of β-thymosins emerging from these studies, for instance, those performed during carcinogenesis, add significant details that could help to resolve the nowadays so-called "β-thymosin enigma", i.e., the potential molecular role played by these two pleiotropic peptides during human development.
这篇综述总结了我们小组进行的一系列研究的结果，旨在定义胸腺素β和胸腺素β在不同人类器官和组织中从胎儿发育到出生后不同年龄的时间表达水平。第一部分描述了对早产儿唾液和龈沟液进行的蛋白质组学研究，这些研究向我们揭示了这些酸性肽及其多种功能的重要性。这些发现促使我们开始进行深入的研究，主要基于免疫化学来确定胸腺素β和胸腺素β在不同年龄的成人和胎儿的不同器官中的分布（通过尸检获得），从而获得β-胸腺素在健康和疾病中的功能的相关建议。这些研究中出现的β-胸腺素的功能，例如在癌变过程中进行的研究，增加了重要的细节，这可能有助于解决当今所谓的“β-胸腺素之谜”，即这两种多功能肽在人类发育过程中可能发挥的潜在分子作用。
