Joint cartilage is attacked in both autoimmune inflammatory and osteoarthritic processes. Type IX collagen (CIX) is a protein of importance for cartilage integrity and stability. In this study we have backcrossed a transgenic disruption of the col9a1 gene, which leads to an absence of CIX, into two different inbred mouse strains, DBA/1 and B10.Q. None of the CIX-deficient mice developed observa...

HIRSCH M. PRENANT G. and POULIQUEN Y. INSERM lJ.86, H&e1 Dieu. Pari.v (France) Puroose. The objective was to determine the supramolecular organization of the cornea1 stroma extracellular matrix (ECM) and the changes which occured during the acquisition of transparency. Methods. Mature corneas and chicken embryo corneas were used. Samples were frozen against a metal block cooled at -18O”C, trans...

Acid-soluble collagen could be isolated from fish skin using acetic acid. In recent years, much attention has been paid to collagen from marine sources, mainly arising from the fact that there is no risk of contagious diseases. Moreover, by processing the fish, significant amounts of waste materials are produced which can be considered as a substitute for these collagen sources. Thunnus tonggol...

The physiological roles of menin, the product of the multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 gene, are not known. Homozygous menin knockout mice exhibit cranial and facial hypoplasia. We, therefore, investigated the role of menin in the regulation of osteoblastic differentiation. Menin antisense oligonucleotides (AS-oligo) reduced endogenous menin expression in the C3H10T1/2 (10T1/2) mouse mesenchy...

Normal human adult articular chondrocytes were used to determine how the chondrocyte phenotype is modulated by culture conditions following long-term culture. We report here for the first time that human articular chondrocytes have a lifespan in the range of 34-37 population doublings. While chondrocytes cultured as monolayers displayed a fibroblastoid morphology and grew faster, those cultured...

OBJECTIVE Platelet activation occurs in response to adhesion receptors for von Willebrand factor (GPIb-V-IX) and collagen (GPVI and alpha2beta1 integrin) acting upstream of phospholipase C (PLC) gamma2. However, PLCbeta transduces signals from Galphaq protein-coupled receptors for soluble agonists (P2y1, TxA2/TP, and thrombin/PAR). A Gi-dependent pathway amplifies most of these responses. MET...

Chondrogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is accurately regulated by essential transcription factors and signaling cascades. However, the precise mechanisms involved in this process still remain to be defined. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate various biological processes by binding target mRNA to attenuate protein synthesis. To investigate the mechanisms for miRNAs-mediated regul...

HIRSCH M. PRENANT G. and POULIQUEN Y. INSERM lJ.86, H&e1 Dieu. Pari.v (France) Puroose. The objective was to determine the supramolecular organization of the cornea1 stroma extracellular matrix (ECM) and the changes which occured during the acquisition of transparency. Methods. Mature corneas and chicken embryo corneas were used. Samples were frozen against a metal block cooled at -18O”C, trans...