Functionally contracting smooth muscle is an essential part of the engineered intestine that has not been replicated in vitro. The purpose of this study is to produce contracting smooth muscle in culture by maintaining the native smooth muscle organization. We employed intact smooth muscle strips and compared them to dissociated smooth muscle cells in culture for 14 days. Cells isolated by enzy...

Vitamin D plays an important role in supporting the immune system. Its expression on vital cells like B, T, and antigen-presenting has become topic of research response to current COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose vitamin is not only bones muscle development, but also its involvement regulation mood

Ubiquitin-specific protease 8 (USP8), a member of the ubiquitin-specific (USP) family, was originally identified as playing role in regulation growth and cell cycle. However, its functional myogenesis is unknown. In this study, we investigated USP8 proliferation differentiation sheep skeletal muscle satellite cells. The results showed that expression level significantly increased on days 2 3 fo...

Vasoconstrictors such as arginine vasopressin (AVP) and angiotensin II (Ang II) have been shown to increase protein and mRNA levels of smooth muscle a-actin (SM-a-actin) in vascular smooth muscle cells. In the same cells, platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) decreased SM-aactin protein and mRNA. The rat SM-a-actin promoter that has recently been isolated contains two E-boxes and three CC(A/T)6...

Heart failure is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. End stage disease often requires heart transplantation, which is hampered by donor organ shortage. Tissue engineering represents a promising alternative approach for cardiac repair. For the generation of artificial heart muscle tissue several cell types, scaffold materials and bioreactor designs are under investigation. In this revi...

JCB • VOLUME 169 • NUMBER 1 • 2005 16 Folding in a crowd roteins fold better in a crowd, as predicted by a biophysical model from Margaret Cheung, Dmitri Klimov, and D. Thirumalai (University of Maryland, College Park, MD). Interactions between a protein and large nearby molecules produce repulsive forces at distances that can be as large as the protein itself. The group modeled the energetic e...

The sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2'-ATPase (SERCA2) plays a critical role in the contractile performance of cardiac and slow-twitch skeletal muscle by restoring cytosolic calcium to low resting levels during the contractile cycle. We have previously shown that SERCA2 expression in the heart is altered by a number of pathophysiological stimuli. In an effort to define molecular mechanisms regulating ...