Hemodialyzed patients with low or high PTH or increased b-AP had a high fracture risk. BMD by Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA), especially at the total hip region, was useful to predict any type of incident of fracture for females with low PTH or to discriminate prevalent spine fracture for every patient.

Microtubule-associated protein (MAP) light chain 3 (LC3) is a human homologue of yeast Apg8/Aut7/Cvt5 (Atg8), which is essential for autophagy. MAP-LC3 is cleaved by a cysteine protease to produce LC3-I, which is located in cytosolic fraction. LC3-I, in turn, is converted to LC3-II through the actions of E1-and E2-like enzymes. LC3-II is covalently attached to phosphatidylethanolamine on its C terminus, and it binds tightly to autophagosome membranes. We determined the solution structure of LC3-I and found that it is divided into N-and C-terminal subdomains. Additional analysis using a photochemically induced dynamic nuclear polarization technique also showed that the N-terminal subdomain of LC3-I makes contact with the surface of the C-terminal subdomain and that LC3-I adopts a single compact conformation in solution. Moreover, the addition of dodecylphosphocholine into the LC3-I solution induced chemical shift perturbations primarily in the C-terminal subdomain, which implies that the two subdomains have different sensitivities to dodecylphosphocholine micelles. On the other hand, deletion of the Nterminal subdomain abolished binding of tubulin and microtubules. Thus, we showed that two subdomains of the LC3-I structure have distinct functions, suggesting that MAP-LC3 can act as an adaptor protein between microtubules and autophagosomes.

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Time-of-flight spectra of the Cl photofragments were measured for molecular beams of o-, m-, and p-chlorotoluene (ClC6H4CH3) and o-, m-, and p-dichlorobenzene (ClC6H4Cl) irradiated by a 193 nm excimer laser pulse. The observed translational energy distributions of photofragments revealed that these chlorinated benzene derivatives dissociate via three different channels: (1) very fast predissociation and/or a direct dissociation, (2) predissociation through the triplet state, and (3) predissociation via highly excited vibrational levels of the ground electronic state (hot molecules). The three dissociation channels for dichlorobenzene have similar probabilities (∼0.3) in accord with those for chlorobenzene, indicating no significant change caused by the additional chlorine atom. The methyl substituent on chlorobenzene (chlorotoluene), however, remarkably induces dissociation through triplet states, probably due to the enhanced intersystem crossing by the methyl group. The angular distribution of the photofragment was also measured for p-chlorotoluene and p-dichlorobenzene excited by linearly polarized laser light. Angular distributions of the Cl fragments via the 2nd and 3rd channels were isotropic, while the fastest fragment via the 1st channel has an anisotropic distribution, confirming that the dissociation rate of the 1st channel is shorter than a molecular rotation.