The role of the actin cytoskeleton in endothelial barrier function has been debated for nearly four decades. Our previous investigation revealed spontaneous local lamellipodia in confluent endothelial monolayers that appear to increase overlap at intercellular junctions. We tested the hypothesis that the barrier-disrupting agent histamine would reduce local lamellipodia protrusions and investig...

UNC-6/Netrin is a conserved axon guidance cue that canmediate both attraction and repulsion. We previously discovered that attractive UNC-40/DCC receptor signaling stimulates growth cone filopodial protrusion and that repulsive UNC-40–UNC-5 heterodimers inhibit filopodial protrusion in C. elegans. Here, we identify cytoplasmic signaling molecules required for UNC-6-mediated inhibition of filopo...

Attractive and repulsive cell guidance is essential for animal life and important in disease. Cell migration toward attractants dominates studies [1-8], but migration away from repellents is important in biology yet relatively little studied [5, 9, 10]. It is widely held that cells initiate migration by protrusion of their front [11-15], yet this has not been explicitly tested for cell guidance...

Fusion peptides from influenza hemagglutinin act on membranes to promote membrane fusion, but the mechanism by which they do so remains unknown. Recent theoretical work has suggested that contact of protruding lipid tails may be an important feature of the transition state for membrane fusion. If this is so, then influenza fusion peptides would be expected to promote tail protrusion in proporti...

OBJECTIVE Changes in eye protrusion in patients treated with pioglitazone. DESIGN Open-label prospective. PATIENTS Thirty-six patients with type 2 diabetes and HbA1c >or= 6.5% were included in a study where pioglitazone was added to current therapy with metformin and sulphonylurea. MEASUREMENTS The degree of eye protrusion before and 26 weeks after treatment with pioglitazone was measured...

BACKGROUND In motile cells, protrusion of the lamellipodium (a type of cell margin) requires assembly of actin monomers into actin filaments at the tip of the lamellipodium. The importance of actin-filament disassembly in this process is less well understood, and is assessed here using the actin drug jasplakinolide, which has two known activities - inhibition of filament disassembly and inducti...

Automated percutaneous lumbar discectomy (APLD) has been developed since 1984 when Gary Onik first attempted it. This procedure has many advantages and has been used widely in the treatment of protruded disc diseases. The success rate of APLD by authors from March 1988 to February 1993 when the discographic computed tomography (CT) had not been performed was 74%. In evaluating lumbar disc disea...