An attempt to isolate intact mitochondria from dry pea seeds (Pisum sativum var. Alaska) ended in failure. Cytochrome oxidase in crude mitochondrial fraction from dry seeds was separated into three fractions by sucrose density gradient centrifugation. Two of the fractions contained malate dehydrogenase, whereas the other did not. Equilibrium centrifugation of mitochondrial membrane on sucrose g...

Phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2), which constitutes ∼1% of the plasma membrane phospholipid, plays a key role in membrane-delimited signaling. PIP2 regulates structurally and functionally diverse membrane proteins, including voltage- and ligand-gated ion channels, inwardly rectifying ion channels, transporters, and receptors. In some cases, the regulation is known to involve specifi...

Neuronal membrane properties dictate neuronal responsiveness. Plasticity of membrane properties alters neuronal function and can arise in response to robust neuronal activity. Despite the potential for great impact, there is little evidence for a rapid effect of activity-dependent changes of membrane properties on many neuronal functions in vivo in mammalian brain. In this study it was tested w...

Introduction: Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are pluripotent cells that can proliferate and differentiate to many cell types. Their electrophysiological properties have not yet been chracterzed. In this study, the passive properties (such as resting membrane potential, input resistance and capacitance) and the contribution of delayed rectifier K+ channel currents to the membrane conducta...

The time-lag method, using a gas permeation experiment, is currently the most popular method for determining the membrane properties: diffusivity coefcient and permeability coefcient, and from which the solubility coefcient can be calculated. In this investigation, the impact of systematic, random (noise), resolution and extrapolation errors associated with gas permeatio...

Virulence of the opportunistic yeast, Candida albieans, involves the interplay of many complex changes including the yeast-hyphae transition, which mainly involves protein changes. Cell wall mannoproteins are found to be the main cause of adherence of C. albieans to epithel ial cells in the first step of an infection process. In the present study, cell wall mannoproteins of intact yeast wer...