| The deterioration of the immune system with progressive aging is believed to contribute to morbidity and mortality in elderly humans due to the increased incidence of infection, autoimmunity and cancer. One of the consequences of an aging immune system is the process termed thymic involution. However, the mechanism of thymic involution is unclear so far. Studies over the last decade indicated that the genetic background of mammal might play an important role in determining age-related alterations in thymic involution. Therefore, it is assumed that thymic involution would be controlled by the heredity, while the altered expression of the genes in thymus might contribute to thymic involution.We had previously identified four murine thymus aging related genes, one of which named IH1. Bioinformatics and previous studies indicate that IH1 might play a role in cellular signal transduction. NF-kB signaling is one of the most common signaling pathways of the body. It regulates a variety of genes important for immunity and inflammation responses, developmental processes, cellular growth, and apoptosis. In addition, NF-κB is persistently active in a number of disease states, such as cancer, arthritis, chronic inflammation, asthma, neurodegenerative diseases and heart disease. We focus our research on the participation of IH1 in NF-κB signaling.IH1 prokaryotic and eukaryotic expression vectors were constructed. The recombinant protein His-IH1 was expressed and purified. Monoclonal antibody against IH1 was prepared through hybridoma technique. Through confocal microscopy, we found that IH1 was localized in cytoplasm. Further observation demonstrated that IL-1β treated cells displayed localization of IH1 in cytoplasm. With dual-luciferase reporter systems for NF-κB activity report, we found IH1 gene can increase the activity of NF-κB in a dosage-dependent manner. Over expression of IH1 in the cell line EL4 can up-regulate...
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