The prosomatostatin-derived peptides somatostatin-14 (Som-14) and somatostatin-28 (Som-28) are believed to act as neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. To examine possible mechanisms by which these peptides induce their physiological actions in brain, the effects of Som-14 and Som-28 on voltage-dependent K+ currents in rat cerebral cortical neurons in culture were examined by using w...

A rational drug design approach involving transposition of functional groups from SRIF into a reduced size cyclohexapeptide template has led to the discovery of SOM230, a novel, stable cyclohexapeptide somatostatin mimic which exhibits unique high affinity binding to human somatostatin receptors (sst1-5). This unique receptor subtype binding profile, in particular the exceptional high affinity ...

The majority of cortical interneurons use GABA (gamma amino butyric acid) as inhibitory neurotransmitter. GABAergic neurons are morphologically, connectionally, electrically and chemically heterogeneous. In rat cerebral cortex three distinct groups of GABAergic interneurons have been identified by the expression of parvalbumin (PV), calretinin (CR) and somatostatin (SOM). Recent studies in mous...

Gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP) can stimulate both gastrin and somatostatin (SOM) secretion, but, as gastrin increases SOM and SOM in turn inhibits gastrin, the overall endpoint in terms of gastrin output is variable. To examine the mechanisms involved, we compared the effects of GRP on gastrin secretion in normal sheep and sheep chronically immunized against SOM. In the normal animal, GRP had ...

it seems that the presence of soil organic matter (som) increases p availability to plants. this effect has commonly been ascribed as competition between the decomposition products of som and p for soil sorption sites resulting in p concentrations increase of soil solution. this study was carried out to obtain information about soil organic matter (som) influence on kinetics and thermodynamics ...

PURPOSE To detect the presence of somatostatin (SOM) in normal aqueous humor and to characterize its immunosuppressive activity. METHODS Fresh rabbit aqueous humor was assayed for SOM by competitive ELISA. Primed T cells stimulated through their T-cell receptor (TCR) were treated with SOM at concentrations that ranged the level of SOM found in normal aqueous humor. The T cells were assayed fo...

The feature map represented by the set of weight vectors of the basic SOM (Self-Organizing Map) provides a good approximation to the input space from which the sample vectors come. But the timedecreasing learning rate and neighborhood function of the basic SOM algorithm reduce its capability to adapt weights for a varied environment. In dealing with non-stationary input distributions and changi...