Cell Biology Symposium: Redox regulation of cell function1

The Cell Biology Symposium on “Redox Regulation of Cell Function” was held at the Joint Annual Meeting of the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS), the American Dairy Science Association, and the Canadian Society of Animal Science in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, July 12 to 16, 2009. The ASAS Board-sponsored symposium was organized to encourage participation by scientists working in cell biology. The intent was to bring scientists involved in basic physiology and cell biology into ASAS as active participants and provide a platform to increase interactions between basic and applied scientists. The Cell Biology Symposium Committee elected to focus on reduction-oxidation (redox) regulation of cell function because the topic is relevant and has widespread application among the various disciplines within animal science. The program was organized to have the first speaker introduce the topic with subsequent speakers covering tissue-specific aspects of cellular redox reactions. The symposium began with a presentation by Guttmann (2010) discussing the maintenance of the redox state in regulation of cysteine-dependent enzymes. Cysteine-containing proteins are important to cell function because they are able to participate in a variety of reactions due, in large part, to the ability of cysteine to exist in many different oxidation states. The thiol side-chain of cysteine is a primary target of oxidation because it is particularly sensitive to all types of oxidizing agents. The major reason that cysteine is sensitive to oxidation is its ability to form anionic sulfur at physiological pH. Examples of redox-regulated enzymes were presented, and cellular mechanisms to protect against oxidative damage were discussed (Guttmann, 2010). The presentation concluded with a discussion of the relevance of redox homeostasis to animal science, which included experimental considerations, animal nutrition, aging of animals, and oxidative stress in postmortem changes of meat.