Upon exposure to ethanol, Drosophila display behaviors that are similar to ethanol intoxication in rodents and humans. Using an inebriometer to measure ethanol-induced loss of postural control, we identified cheapdate, a mutant with enhanced sensitivity to ethanol. Genetic and molecular analyses revealed that cheapdate is an allele of the memory mutant amnesiac. amnesiac has been postulated to ...

Signaling through cAMP has been implicated in Schwann cell (SC) proliferation and myelination, but the signaling pathway components downstream of cAMP required for SC function remain unknown. Protein kinase A (PKA) is a potential downstream effector of cAMP. Here, we induced loss of Prkar1a, the gene encoding the type 1A regulatory subunit of PKA, in SC to study its role in nerve development; l...

cAMP-mediated PKA signaling is the main known pathway involved in maintenance of the endothelial barrier. Tight regulation of PKA function can be achieved by discrete compartmentalization of the enzyme via physical interaction with A-kinase anchoring proteins (AKAPs). Here, we investigated the role of AKAPs 220 and 12 in endothelial barrier regulation. Analysis of human and mouse microvascular ...

The steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (STAR) protein expression is required for cholesterol transport into mitochondria to initiate steroidogenesis in the adrenal and gonads. STAR is synthesized as a 37 kDa precursor protein which is targeted to the mitochondria and imported and processed to an intra-mitochondrial 30 kDa protein. Tropic hormone stimulation of the cAMP-dependent protein kin...

cAMP negatively regulates T cell immune responses by activation of type I protein kinase A (PKA), which in turn phosphorylates and activates C-terminal Src kinase (Csk) in T cell lipid rafts. Using yeast two-hybrid screening, far-Western blot, immunoprecipitation and immunofluorescense analyses, and small interfering RNA-mediated knockdown, we identified Ezrin as the A-kinase anchoring protein ...

Molecular mechanisms of morphogenesis share many common components between Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The Kss1-associated MAPK cascade and the cAMP/PKA pathway are two important signal transduction pathways that control morphogenesis in S. cerevisiae. A C. albicans copper ion-sensing transcription factor gene, CaMAC1, was cloned from C. albicans SC5314. Ectopic expression of...

To test for a role for the cellular prion protein (PrP(c)) in cell death, we used a PrP(c)-binding peptide. Retinal explants from neonatal rats or mice were kept in vitro for 24 h, and anisomycin (ANI) was used to induce apoptosis. The peptide activated both cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA) and Erk pathways, and partially prevented cell death induced by ANI in explants from wild-type rodents, but no...

The cyclic AMP (cAMP)-dependent protein kinase A (PKA) signaling pathway plays a role in regulating development, growth, and virulence in a number of fungi. To determine whether PKA plays a similar function in zygomycete fungi, a mutant of Mucor circinelloides was generated that lacks pkaR1, one of the regulatory subunits of PKA. The mutant showed a reduction in growth and alterations in germin...

Strains carrying ras2(318S) as their sole RAS gene fail to elicit a transient increase in cAMP levels following addition of glucose to starved cells but maintain normal steady-state levels of cAMP under a variety of growth conditions. Such strains show extended delays in resuming growth following transition from a quiescent state to glucose-containing growth media, either in emerging from stati...