Loss of pericytes from retinal microvessels is one of the key events in the natural history of diabetic retinopathy. Cultured human retinal pericytes would constitute an extremely useful tool for the study of the early events in the pathogenesis of this complication, but, due to legal and ethical issues, pericytes of animal origin have been mostly used so far for in vitro assays. We aimed at es...

The prorenin/renin receptor is a recently discovered component of the renin-angiotensin system. The effects of aliskiren, a direct inhibitor of human renin, were compared with the handle region decoy peptide (HRP), which blocks the prorenin/renin receptor, in double-transgenic rats overexpressing the human renin and angiotensinogen genes. After 7 wk, all aliskiren-treated rats were alive, where...

Lipid rafts that are enriched in glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins serve as a platform for important biological events. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms of these events, identification of co-clustering molecules in individual raft domains is required. Here we describe an approach to this issue using the recently developed method termed enzyme-mediated activation of radic...

MOCP (maternal obstructive cholestasis during pregnancy) induces a reversible impairment in bile formation in young rats born to these mothers. The aim of the present study was to gain information on the effects of MOCP on the maturation of pathways involved in protein secretion into bile in young (4-week-old) rats. The amount of hepatic alpha-tubulin and the structure of the microtubular netwo...

Despite the advantages of plant-based transient expression systems relative to microbial or mammalian cell systems, the commercial production of recombinant proteins using plants has not yet been achieved to any significant extent. One of the challenges has been the lack of published data on the costs of manufacture for products other than biopharmaceuticals. In this study, we report on the tec...

Transport parameters that describe a macromolecule entering the arterial wall from plasma can be obtained from concentration profiles of the labeled macromolecule entering the tissue. A new technique has been developed for measuring such concentration profiles, which offers spatial resolution superior to methods that measure profiles of radiolabeled macromolecules by serially sectioning tissue ...

Herein we report the development of a highly active, magnetically retrievable and reusable biocatalyst using multilayer enzyme coupled-magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) prepared by layer-by-layer assembly using two well-studied enzymes, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) and glucose oxidase (GOX), as a model enzyme system. We show that by combining the use of a biocompatible linker as well as biospecific...

The (pro)renin receptor [(P)RR], a new component the renin-angiotensin system, was cloned recently. The (P)RR promotes direct mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling and nonproteolytic prorenin activation. We investigated the role of a (P)RR blocker, a peptide consisting of 10 amino acids from the prorenin prosegment called the "handle-region" peptide (HRP), on target organ damage in renovas...

A synthetic gene encoding horseradish peroxidase isoenzyme C (HRP C) has been synthesized and expressed in Escherichia coli. The nonglycosylated recombinant enzyme (HRP C*) was produced in inclusion bodies in an insoluble inactive form containing only traces of heme. HRP C* was solubilized and conditions under which it folded to give active enzyme were determined. Folding was shown to be critic...

In mobile ad hoc networks, there is no centralized infrastructure to monitor or allocate the resources used by the mobile nodes. The absence of any central coordinator makes the routing a complex one compared to cellular networks. The Ad hoc On Demand Hybrid Routing Protocols (HRP) routing algorithm is a routing protocol designed for ad hoc mobile devices. HRP uses an on demand approach for fin...