The smooth muscle (SM) alpha-actin gene activated during the early stages of embryonic cardiovascular development is switched off in late stage heart tissue and replaced by cardiac and skeletal alpha-actins. SM alpha-actin also appears during vascular development, but becomes the single most abundant protein in adult vascular smooth muscle cells. Tissue-specific expression of SM alpha-actin is ...

Sm and Sm-like proteins are members of a family of small proteins that is widespread throughout eukaryotic kingdoms. These proteins form heteromers with one another and bind, as heteromeric complexes, to various RNAs, recognizing primarily short U-rich stretches. Interestingly, completion of several genome projects revealed that archaea also contain genes that may encode Sm-like proteins. Herei...

Swarming migration of Serratia marcescens requires both flagellar motility and cellular differentiation and is a population-density-dependent behavior. While the flhDC and quorum-sensing systems have been characterized as important factors regulating S. marcescens swarming, the underlying molecular mechanisms are currently far from being understood. Serratia swarming is thermoregulated and is c...

BACKGROUND Sphingomyelin (SM) is the major phospholipid in cell membranes and in lipoproteins. In human plasma, SM is mainly found in atherogenic lipoproteins; thus, high levels of SM may promote atherogenesis. METHODS We investigated in a median follow up of 6.0 years the association of SM with the incidence of a combined endpoint (myocardial infarction and cardiovascular death) in stable an...

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) nuclear protein BS-MLF1 (SM) is expressed early after entry of EBV into the lytic cycle. SM transactivates reporter gene constructs driven by a wide variety of promoters, but the mechanism of SM action is poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrate that the SM protein inhibits expression of intron-containing genes and activates expression of intron-less genes. ...

Objective: Sulphur mustard (SM), chemically 2,2'-dichloro diethyl sulphide, is an incapacitating and extremely toxic chemical warfare agent, and causes serious blisters on contact with human skin. SM forms sulphonium ion in the body that alkylates DNA and several other macromolecules, and induces oxidative stress. The aim of this study was to evaluate the protective effect of Aloe vera L. gel a...

Resistance (R) factor-mediated streptomycin (Sm) resistance differs from classical, high-level, chromosome-borne Sm resistance in its dominance over sensitivity and in the level of its effectiveness (in Escherichia coli approximately 25 mug/ml versus >2,000 mug/ml). In addition, an R factor-containing strain, unlike high-level Sm-resistant bacteria, showed an inoculum effect with respect to its...

Messenger RNA processing in trypanosomes by cis and trans splicing requires spliceosomal small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) U1, U2, U4/U6, and U5, as well as the spliced leader (SL) RNP. As in other eukaryotes, these RNPs share a core structure of seven Sm polypeptides. Here, we report that the identity of the Sm protein constituents varies between spliceosomal snRNPs: specifically, two ...

We challenge the view that technology transfer from big companies to small and medium (SM) size companies helps SM companies to prosper. With a large dataset of SM companies in Korea, we utilize the stochastic production frontier (SPF) model to examine the productivity of inputs and the generalized linear model (GLM) to compare business performance between two groups of SM companies: SM compani...