The branching angle and diameter ratio in epicardial coronary artery bifurcations are two important determinants of atherogenesis. Murray's cubed diameter law and bifurcation angle have been assumed to yield optimal flows through a bifurcation. In contrast, we have recently shown a 7/3 diameter law (HK diameter model), based on minimum energy hypothesis in an entire tree structure. Here, we der...

Radiotherapy is now widely used as a part of multidisciplinary treatment approaches for advanced laryngeal carcinoma and preservation of laryngeal function. However, the mechanism of the radioresistance is still unclear. Some studies have revealed that the Warburg effect promotes the radioresistance of various malignant tumors, including laryngeal carcinoma. Among the regulators involved in the...

A unique cDNA for hexokinase (HK) was identified from poly(A)+ RNA of human reticulocytes by anchored polymerase chain reaction. This appeared to represent the cDNA for the red blood cell (RBC)-specific HK isozyme (HKR) described in our previous study (Murakami et al: Blood 75:770, 1990). Its nucleotide sequence was identical to HKI cDNA except for the 5' extreme end. It lacked the first 62 nuc...

In mammals, sleep is thought to be important for health, cognition, and memory. Fruit flies share most features of mammalian sleep, and a recent study found that Drosophila lines carrying loss-of-function mutations in Shaker (Sh) are short sleeping, suggesting that the Sh current plays a major role in regulating daily sleep amount. The Sh current is potentiated by a beta modulatory subunit code...

Prekallikrein (PK) activation on human umbilical endothelial cells (HUVEC) presumably leads to bradykinin liberation. On HUVEC, PK activation requires the presence of cell-bound high-molecular-weight kininogen (HK) and Zn(2+). We examined the Zn(2+) requirement for HK binding to and the consequences of PK activation on endothelial cells. Optimal HK binding (14 pmol/10(6) HUVEC) is seen with no ...

When blood (plasma) contacts certain foreign surfaces, factor XII can activate and trigger a series of reactions leading to cleavage of kininogens with subsequent release of bradykinin. In this study, we investigated two different widely used leukocyte removal filters, Pall PXL8K (A) and Asahi PLS-5A (B), to test whether clinically significant contact activation occurred during leukodepletion o...

Red cells from high K sheep contained 82 mM K/liter cells and had a pump flux of 0.86 mM K/liter cells x hr; similarly, LK cells had 16.5 mM K/liter cells and a pump flux of 0.12 mM K/liter cells x hr. Using [(3)H]-ouabain, the relation between the number of ouabain molecules bound per cell and the concomitant per cent inhibition of the pump was found to be approximately linear for both HK and ...

BACKGROUND Atherosclerotic plaque thrombogenicity is a critical factor that affects thrombus formation and the onset of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The aim of this study was to identify the vascular factors involved in thrombus formation and AMI onset. METHODSANDRESULTS Culprit lesions in 40 coronary arteries with thrombi at autopsy after lethal AMI and non-cardiac death (asymptomatic ...

Time-resolved Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) difference spectra of the halorhodopsin (hR) photocycle have been collected from 3 micros to 100 ms in saturating concentrations of KCl or KBr. Kinetic analysis of these data revealed two decay processes, with time constants of tau(1) approximately 150 micros and tau(2) approximately 16 ms in the presence of either halide, with tau(2) describing t...

AIMS The objective of this study was to assess in vitro, whether heat-killed (HK) lactic acid bacteria cells and fractionations of HK cells could suppress the viability of human cancer cells and inhibit the cytotoxicity associated with oxidative stress. METHODS AND RESULTS Among the strains, the HK cells of Lactobacillus acidophilus 606 and Lactobacillus casei ATCC 393 exhibited the most prof...