We have used antibody to chicken gizzard alpha-actinin to identify and localize this molecule in chicken intestinal epithelium. The antibody binds only to alpha-actinin when tested against a crude extract of chicken gizzard. Extracts of purified epithelial cells contain a molecule which has a subunit molecular weight of 100,000 on sodium dodecyl sulphate gels and which is able to inhibit the in...

We studied product inhibition of the actin-activated ATPase of myosin subfragment-1 (S-1) from the three types of muscle tissue: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth. Increasing levels of [MgADP] in the 0-1-mM range caused significant inhibition of the actin-activated MgATPase activity of cardiac and gizzard but not skeletal muscle S-1. When total nucleotide concentration ([ATP] + [ADP]) was kept cons...

Proventricular (glandular stomach) mesenchyme of chicken embryos can induce endoderms of some parts of embryonic digestive tract to produce embryonic chicken pepsinogen (ECPg), a marker protein for the differentiation of embryonic proventricular epithelium. In the present study, we investigated the production of ECPg mRNA in the course of epithelial-mesenchymal interactions between endoderms of...

EXPERIMENTAL results indicating the necessity of an organic dietary factor for the maintenance of a normal gizzard lining in the chick, and the prevention of erosions or lesions of the lining have been given in a number of papers."1 2, 3 4 A series of experiments on the role of the bile acids in this deficiency disease may now be reported. The feeding of whole bile by oral administration or by ...

Caldesmon is an F-actin cross-linking protein of chicken gizzard smooth muscle whose F-actin binding activity can be regulated in vitro by Ca2+-calmodulin (Sobue, K., Y. Muramoto, M. Fujita, and S. Kakiuchi, 1981, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 78:5652-5655). It is a rod-shaped, heat-stable, F-actin bundling protein and is the most abundant F-actin cross-linking protein of chicken gizzard smooth m...

Three hundred and sixty one-day-old chicks (Arian) were used in a completely randomized design with five treatments and four replicates for each treatment. The experimental treatments included: control group (without barley) with and without enzyme, 20% hulled barley with and without enzyme, 20% hull-less barley with and without enzyme. Body weights, feed intake and feed conversion were determi...

Forty captive Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), of both sexes, were separated into five groups and dosed with lead shot via oral intubation; one group was used as a control. Lead dosage differed in terms of shot number and size, as well as administration time. One hundred and thirty-five wild mallards were trapped between 1998 and 2001 in the Boada and Nava lagoons near the Canal de Castilla, in t...

We have examined the protease susceptibility of aortic myosin, the thermal unfolding profiles of myosin rod and light meromyosin (LMM) and the solubility properties of the LMM fragments. Two major protease-susceptible sites were found, located at the head-rod junction and the heavy meromyosin (HMM)-LMM junction. Both tryptic and chymotryptic digestion of aortic myosin rod produced the LMM (80-8...

During embryogenesis, smooth muscle cells of the gut differentiate from mesenchymal cells derived from splanchnic mesoderm. We have isolated a gene involved in the differentiation of smooth muscle cells in the gut using differential display between the chicken proventriculus in which the smooth muscle layer develops poorly and the gizzard in which smooth muscles develop abundantly. The protein ...

Gut bacterial communities have been shown to be influenced by diet, host phylogeny and anatomy, but most of these studies have been done in captive animals. Here we compare the bacterial communities in the digestive tract of wild birds. We characterized the gizzard and intestinal microbiota among 8 wild Neotropical bird species, granivorous or frugivorous species of the orders Columbiformes and...