Light and transmission electron microscopic studies of thymic myoid cells in Nandanam Chicken was done in various age groups ranging from day-old to forty weeks. Thymus is the central lymphoid organ in fowl, provides a complex environment essential for T-cell development and maturation. The thymic gland in chicken was covered by a thin connective tissue capsule. The connective tissue septa divi...

The expression of activin type II and IIB receptors and inhibin alpha-, beta A-, and beta B-subunit messenger RNAs (mRNAs), and the secretion of immunoreactive and bioactive activin during culture of testicular peritubular myoid cells and peritubular myoid cell lines were studied. Cultured peritubular myoid cells and cell lines expressed high levels of inhibin beta A-subunit mRNA and some inhib...

AIMS To clarify factor(s) involved in morphological dedifferentiation of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells in vitro from mitotically quiescent hexagonal cells to flattened cells that lack epithelial characteristics and concurrent myoid differentiation. METHODS RPE cells which retained their differentiated hexagonal morphology were isolated from bovine eyes by mechanical pipetting. Dediff...

An electron microscope study of the Harderian gland of the snake, Rhabdophis tigrinus, revealed the occurrence of a myoid cell in the glandular body. The myoid cell, in oval profile, is located in the perivascular space and enveloped by a basement membrane. The plasma membrane of the cell is studded with a number of vesicular caveoli. The myoid cell cytoplasm is largely occupied by myofilaments...

Tubular boundary tissue and seminiferous epithelia were evaluated stereologically in testes from 28 men aged 20 to 48 years and 28 men aged 50 to 90 years. Testes obtained at autopsy within 15 hours of death were perfused with glutaraldehyde, embedded in Epon (Ladd Research Industries, Inc., Burlington, VT), sectioned at 0.5 micron, and stained with toluidine blue. Volume densities (percentage ...

Most common tumors of the spleen are hematologic and lymphoid malignancies. Non-lymphoid and non-hematologic tumors of the spleen are very rare, the most common of which are vascular tumors. This group of tumors in the spleen is composed of heterogeneous tumors such as hemangioma, angioendothelioma (AE), littoral cell angioma, and angiosarcoma. There are several histologic forms of AE such as e...

Myoid hamartomas of the breast are extremely rare breast lesions, with a poorly understood pathogenesis. A 60-year-old woman presented with a palpable mass in the right breast. Breast ultrasonography and mammography showed the presence of a breast lesion with benign characters, but were not diagnostic. A local excision of the mass was performed; histology revealed that the tumor was composed of...

To investigate the role of thymic myoid cells in the pathogenesis of myasthenia gravis (MG), mRNA of nonneoplastic thymuses from eight MG patients was analyzed by dot blot hybridization for the occurrence of acetylcholine receptor (AChR) subunit transcripts, using the five AChR-subunit cDNAs (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon) as probes. Attention was particularly paid to the gamma- and ep...

The met protooncogene encodes the hepatocyte growth factor receptor (HGFR, c-met). C-met, a tyrosine kinase receptor protein, is widely expressed in different cell types including the male reproductive tract. As we recently demonstrated, both c-met messenger RNA and protein are expressed in prebuberal rat testis. The aim of this work was to detect the expression of c-met during postnatal testis...

To the Editor: Myoid hamartoma (MH) is an extremely rare subtype of breast hamartoma characterized by the presence of myoid cell bundles in the stroma. Only approximately 30 cases have been reported to date. So its biological behavior, clinicopathologic features and histological origin are not well characterized. Moreover, its potential recurrence is usually overlooked. To the best of our knowl...