Denervation degrades normal ligament properties and impairs ligament healing. This suggests that secreted neuromediators, such as neuropeptides, could be modulating cell metabolism in ligament and scar tissue. To test this hypothesis we investigated the effect of exogenous substance P (SP), neuropeptide Y (NPY) or calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) on the mRNA levels for proteins associated...

Neuropeptides play a key role in the regulation of behaviors and physiological responses including alertness, social recognition, and hunger, yet, their mechanism of action is poorly understood. Here, we focus on the endocrine control ecdysis behavior, which is used by arthropods to shed their cuticle at the end of every molt. Ecdysis is triggered by ETH (Ecdysis triggering hormone), and we sho...

Vasopressin (AVP) and oxytocin (OT) receptors (nomenclature as recommended by NC-IUPHAR [94]) are activated the endogenous cyclic nonapeptides vasopressin oxytocin. These peptides derived from precursors which also produce neurophysins (neurophysin I for oxytocin; neurophysin II vasopressin). differ at only 2 amino acids (positions 3 8). There metabolites of these neuropeptides that may be biol...

BACKGROUND Among neurogenic factors, the neuropeptides have an important regulatory influence on immune system activity and may lead to allergic sensitization. OBJECTIVE The aim of our study was to investigate the relationship of the neuropeptides vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP), somatostatin (SOM) and substance P (SP) on modulation of Th1/Th2 balance and allergic sensitization in childre...

Neuropeptides have widespread effects on behavior, but how these molecules alter the activity of their target cells is poorly understood. We employed a new model system in Drosophila melanogaster to assess the electrophysiological and molecular effects of neuropeptides, recording in situ from larval motor neurons, which transgenically express a receptor of choice. We focused on two neuropeptide...

BACKGROUND Neuropeptides play an important role in cellular communication in vertebrates. This is also true for insects in which many physiological, developmental and behavioral processes are affected by neuropeptides produced in neurosecretory cells of the retrocerebral complex. Small neuropeptides of the adipokinetic hormone/red pigment concentrating hormone family (AKH/RPCH) are one of the i...

A noncholinergic, nonadrenergic nervous system has been described, involving the sensory nerves in the airways. Chemicals, dusts and other irritants stimulate these sensory nerves to release substance P and related neuropeptides. These neuropeptides have the remarkable ability to affect multiple cells in the airways and to provoke many responses including cough, mucus secretion, smooth muscle c...

The current growth of interest in peptides arising within, or having biological effects on, the nervous system has resulted in a broader application in neurobiology of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a technique that combines great simplicity and sensitivity with the inherent specificity of immunological reactions. Two general strategies in which RIA is a central tool for the study of neuropeptides can...