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Sirtuins are a family of deacetylases that target histone and non-histone proteins and require NAD(+) as an enzymatic cofactor for their enzymatic activity. This requirement confers sirtuins with the ability to detect changes in metabolism and energy homeostasis and to coordinate cellular responses to maintain genome integrity. Thus, sirtuins are crucial in the crosstalk between environment and genome, and therefore in responses to stress at the cell and organism levels. Sirtuins play a major role in maintaining genome integrity, largely through regulation of epigenetic mechanisms. They target different histone marks, including H4K16Ac, H3K9Ac, H3K56Ac and H3K18Ac, and non-histone components of the chromatin machinery, such as enzymes and structural proteins. Here we summarize our current view on the link between sirtuins and epigenetics, one that reflects the continual adaptation of the genome to stress., (© 2014 FEBS.)

The visual photoreceptor rhodopsin undergoes a series of conformational changes upon light activation, eventually leading to the active metarhodopsin II conformation, which is able to bind and activate the G-protein, transducin. We have previously shown that mutant rhodopsins G51V and G89D, associated with retinitis pigmentosa, present photobleaching patterns characterized by the formation of altered photointermediates whose nature remained obscure. Our current detailed UV-visible spectroscopic analysis, together with functional characterization, indicate that these mutations influence the relative stability of the different metarhodopsin photointermediates by altering their equilibria and maintaining the receptor in a nonfunctional light-induced conformation that may be toxic to photoreceptor cells. We propose that G51V and G89D shift the equilibrium from metarhodopsin I towards an intermediate, recently named as metarhodopsin Ib, proposed to interact with transducin without activating it. This may be one of the causes contributing to the molecular mechanisms underlying cell death associated with some retinitis pigmentosa mutations., (© 2011 The Authors Journal compilation © 2011 FEBS.)