Smooth Muscle Cell Heterogeneity

Non-muscle myosin isoforms and cell heterogeneity in developing rabbit vascular smooth muscle.

A panel of monoclonal antibodies specific for cytoskeletal and cytocontractile protein markers has been used to study the expression of vimentin, desmin and alpha-smooth muscle (SM) actin, as well as non-muscle (NM) and SM myosin isoforms, in developing rabbit aorta. Immunofluorescence experiments show that in the vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC): (1) vimentin and alpha-actin of SM-type are h...

Smooth muscle cell heterogeneity: patterns of gene expression in vascular smooth muscle cells in vitro and in vivo.

Early morphological and biochemical studies indicated that vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) exhibited two distinct phenotypes and that a change from the contractile to the synthetic phenotype was a prerequisite for progression of vascular disease. More recently, it has become evident that these phenotypes probably represent the extremes of a spectrum of phenotypes that may coexist in the ve...

The Smooth Muscle Cell

These studies have examined the ability of smooth muscle cells from developing aorta of the prepubertal rat to utilize amino acids in the synthesis and secretion of connective tissue proteins. Prepubertal rats, previously given either an alcohol carrier or estradiol-17-beta, were each given an intravenous injection of proline-(3)H. The animals were sacrificed after 15 and 30 min, and 4 hr. Ligh...

UnTEThering (smooth muscle) cell plasticity.

C ellular plasticity has become the subject of intense research, with perhaps the greatest example provided by the recent Nobel Prize winners Drs Yamananka and Gurdon and the demonstration that terminally differentiated fibro-blasts can be coaxed into assuming an embryonic stem cell-like fate. Emerging evidence suggests that plasticity inherent in cells may be hijacked in the progression of dis...

Human Airway Smooth Muscle Cell