To study an endocytotic role of the GTP-binding protein RhoA in Xenopus oocytes, we have monitored changes in the surface expression of sodium pumps, the surface area of the oocyte and the uptake of the fluid-phase marker inulin. Xenopus oocytes possess intracellular sodium pumps that are continuously exchanged for surface sodium pumps by constitutive endo- and exocytosis. Injection of Clostrid...

Signalling via m3 and m2 receptors in smooth muscles involved activation of two G-protein-dependent pathways by each receptor. m2 receptors were coupled via Gbetagammai3 with activation of phospholipase C-beta3, phosphoinositide 3-kinase and Cdc42/Rac1 (where Cdc stands for cell division cycle) and p21-activated kinase 1 (PAK1), resulting in phosphorylation and inactivation of myosin light chai...

AIMS Leptin-induced cardiomyocyte hypertrophy is dependent on both RhoA and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) activation. The present study investigated the role of lipid raft/caveolae in these responses and assessed the nature of p38 MAPK activation in mediating leptin-induced hypertrophy. METHODS AND RESULTS Studies were carried out using cultured neonatal rat ventricular myoc...

Integrins respond to ‘‘inside-out’’ signals, which enable them to bind adhesive ligands, and ligand binding initiates ‘‘outside-in’’ signals that mediate anchorage-dependent cellular responses. RhoA is a GTPase that regulates certain actin rearrangements and transcriptional events. It has also been implicated in integrin signaling, but the exact relationship is not understood. To examine this f...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic pathogen, is capable of establishing both chronic and acute infections in compromised hosts. Previous studies indicated that P. aeruginosa displays either a cytotoxic or an invasive phenotype in corneal epithelial cells. In this study, we used polarized MDCK cells for in vitro infection studies and confirmed that P. aeruginosa isolates can be broadly dif...

Sustained contractions of smooth muscle cells (SMC) maintain basal tone in the internal anal sphincter (IAS). To examine the molecular bases for the myogenic tone in the IAS, the present studies focused on the role of RhoA/ROCK in the SMC isolated from the IAS vs. the adjoining phasic tissues of the rectal smooth muscle (RSM) and anococcygeus smooth muscle (ASM) of rat. We also compared cellula...

The increasing computing demands of autonomous driving applications have driven the adoption multicore processors in real-time systems, which turn renders energy optimizations critical for reducing battery capacity and vehicle weight. A typical optimization method targeting traditional systems finds a speed under static deadline, resulting conservative savings that are unable to exploit dynamic...