EXPERIMENTAL and MOLECULAR MEDICINE, Vol. 35, No. 4, 279-284, August 2003 Lipid rafts are important for the association of RANK and TRAF6 Hyunil Ha1,3, Han Bok Kwak1,2,3, Introduction Soo Woong Lee1,2,3, Hong-Hee Kim2,4, 1,2,3,5 Osteoclasts are multinucleated giant cells responsible and Zang Hee Lee for bone resorption. These cells are differentiated from 1 hematopoietic myeloid precursors of the monocyte/ National Research Laboratory for Bone Metabolism macrophage lineage (Suda et al., 1992). For the dif- 2Research Center for Proteineous Materials 3 ferentiation of osteoclast precursors into mature osteo- School of Dentistry clasts, a cell-to-cell interaction between osteoclast Chosun University, Gwangju 501-759, Korea 4 precursors and osteoblasts/stromal cells are required Department of Cell and Developmental Biology (Udagawa et al., 1990). Recently, many studies have College of Dentistry, Seoul National University provided ample evidences that the TNF family mem- Seoul 110-749, Korea κ 5 ber RANKL (receptor activator of NF- B ligand; also Corresponding author: Tel, 82-62-230-6872; known as ODF, OPGL, and TRANCE) is expressed Fax, 82-62-227-6589; E-mail,
[email protected] on the surface of osteoblasts/stromal cells and es- sential for osteoclast differentiation (Anderson et al., Accepted 19 June 2003 1997; Yasuda et al., 1998; Takahashi et al., 1999). When its receptor RANK was stimulated by RANKL, Abbreviations: MAPK, mitogen-activated protein kinase; MCD, several TNF receptor-associated factors (TRAFs), methyl-β-cyclodextrin; RANK, receptor activator of NF-κB; TLR, especially TRAF6, can be directly recruited into RANK Toll-like receptor; TNFR, TNF receptor; TRAF, TNF receptor- cytoplasmic domains and may trigger downstream associated factor signaling molecules for the activation of NF-κB and mitogen activated protein kinases (MAPKs) (Darnay et al., 1998; Wong et al., 1998; Kim et al., 1999).