The collagen-tailed forms of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) are accumulated at mammalian neuromuscular junctions. The A(4), A(8), and A(12) forms are expressed differently in the rat fast and slow muscles; the sternomastoid muscle contains essentially the A(12) form at end plates, whereas the soleus muscle also contains extrajunctional A(4) and A(8) forms. We show that collagen Q (ColQ) transcript...

The intermediate filament protein IFA-2 is essential for the structural integrity of the Caenorhabditis elegans epidermis. It is one of the major components of the fibrous organelle, an epidermal structure comprised of apical and basal hemidesmosomes linked by cytoplasmic intermediate filaments that serve to transmit force from the muscle to the cuticle. Mutations of IFA-2 result in epidermal f...

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) participate in various physiological and pathological functions following generation from different types of cells. Here we explore ROS functions on spontaneous tail regeneration using gecko model. ROS were mainly produced in the skeletal muscle after tail amputation, showing a temporal increase as the regeneration proceeded. Inhibition of the ROS production influe...

Prolactin (PRL) is widely considered to be the juvenile hormone of anuran tadpoles and to counteract the effects of thyroid hormone (TH), the hormone that controls amphibian metamorphosis. This putative function was concluded mainly from experiments in which mammalian PRL was injected into tadpoles or added to cultured tadpole tissues. In this study, we show that overexpression of ovine or Xeno...

Phosphorylation of the regulatory light chain of Dictyostelium myosin II increases V(max) of its actin-dependent MgATPase activity about 5-fold under normal assay conditions. Under these assay conditions, unphosphorylated chimeric myosins in which the tail domain of the Dictyostelium myosin II heavy chain is replaced by either the tail domain of chicken gizzard smooth muscle or Acanthamoeba myo...

The kinetics of potassium tail currents have been studied in the omohyoid muscle of the rat using the three-microelectrode voltage-clamp technique. The currents were elicited by a two-pulse protocol in which a conditioning pulse to open channels was followed by a test step to varying levels. The tail currents reversed at a single well-defined potential (VK). At hyperpolarized test potentials (-...