The EMBO Journal Vol.18 No.17 pp.4633–4644, 1999 Impaired retinal function and vitamin A availability in mice lacking retinol-binding protein Loredana Quadro1,2, William S.Blaner3, (Morris-Kay and Sokolova, 1996; Napoli, 1996). With the Daniel J.Salchow4, Silke Vogel3, exception of vision, the all-trans- and 9-cis-isomers of Roseann Piantedosi3, Peter Gouras4, retinoic acid are the active retinoid forms needed to Sarah Freeman4, Maria P.Cosma2, support retinoid-dependent processes. Retinoic acid Vittorio Colantuoni2,5,6 and isomers regulate gene expression by binding to specific Max E.Gottesman1,6 nuclear receptors, the retinoic acid receptors (RARs) and retinoid X receptors (RXRs), that function as ligand- 1Institute of Cancer Research, 3Department of Medicine and dependent transcription factors (Chen and Evans, 1995; 4Department of Ophthalmology, Columbia University, College of Kurokawa et al., 1995; Leblanc and Stunnenberg, 1995; Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10032, USA and Mangelsdorf et al., 1995; Pfahl and Chytil, 1996). Expres- 2Department of Biochemistry and Medical Biotechnologies, University of Naples, Via Pansini 5, 80131 Naples, Italy sion of .300 genes is influenced by retinoic acid availability (Gudas et al., 1994; Clagett-Dame and Plum, 1997). The 5Present address: Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Sannio, 82100 Benevento, Italy retinoid used in the visual cycle is 11-cis-retinal (Wald, 1968), which forms a Schiff’s base with opsin in photo- 6Corresponding authors e-mail:
[email protected] or
[email protected] receptors to generate rhodopsin, the visual pigment. When excited by light, 11-cis-retinal isomerizes to all-trans- Retinol-binding protein (RBP) is the sole specific trans- retinal.