Loss of polarity and quiescence along with increased cellular invasiveness are associated with breast tumor progression. ROCK plays a central role in actin-cytoskeletal rearrangement. We used physiologically relevant 3D cultures of nonmalignant and cancer cells in gels made of laminin-rich extracellular matrix, to investigate ROCK function. Whereas expression levels of ROCK1 and ROCK2 were elev...

AIMS Deleted in liver cancer 1 (DLC1), a member of RhoGTPase activating protein (GAP) family, is known to have suppressive activities in tumorigenicity and cancer metastasis. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of how DLC1 suppresses cell motility have not been fully elucidated. Rho-kinase (ROCK) is an immediate down-stream effector of RhoA in mediating cellular cytoskeletal events and...

BACKGROUND Rho-associated kinase (ROCK), an effector of small GTPase Rho, regulates vascular tone via a calcium sensitization mechanism and plays a key role in the pathogenesis of hypertension. However, its role in vascular growth remains unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS Y-27632, a specific ROCK inhibitor, and the overexpression of dominant-negative ROCK suppressed the mitogen-induced DNA synthes...

Previously, we and others have shown that RhoA and ROCK signaling are required for negatively regulating integrin-mediated adhesion and for tail retraction of migrating leukocytes. This study continues our investigation into the molecular mechanisms underlying RhoA/ROCK-regulated integrin adhesion. We show that inhibition of ROCK up-regulates integrin-mediated adhesion, which is accompanied by ...

In this paper, we consider the use of texture granularity in the classification and retrieval of natural rock images. In rock science, the rock images are nowadays stored into large image databases. In the images, there often occur large grains which differ clearly from rock texture. The purpose of this work is to find grain rock images from the database. We present two approaches to this purpo...

Female rock musicians have had difficulty making it in the predominantly white male rock world. Joanne Gottlieb and Gayle Wald note that women’s participation in rock music usually consists of bolstering male performance, in the roles of groupie, girlfriend, or back-up singer (257). Even in punk rock, women are often treated as a novelty by the music press and cultural critics. Male bands such ...

Steel-lined pressure tunnels and shafts are used to convey water from the reservoir to the turbines in high-head hydroelectric power plants. An axisymmetrical multilayer model is often considered by engineers for the design of the steel liner. Stresses and deformations can then be computed with a closed-form analytical solution in isotropic rock. When the rock is anisotropic, the lowest elastic...

RhoA/Rho kinases (ROCK) play a critical role in vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) actin cytoskeleton organization, differentiation, and function and are implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. We have previously determined that an important step in the regulation of calcification is fetuin-A endocytosis, a process that is dependent on changes in the cytoskeleton, which, in tu...

Chemical analysis of the Water-rock interaction showed that hydrothermal altered rock contains large amount of fluoride. Considering that alteration has mainly occurred at the fractures’ cleavages, the aim of this paper is to investigate the change of the mineral composition between the cleavages and other parts of the granite surfaces. Scanning electron microscope with energy-dispersive spectr...

The ROCK-I serine/threonine protein kinase mediates the effects of RhoA to promote the formation of actin stress fibres and integrin-based focal adhesions. ROCK-I phosphorylates the unconventional G-protein RhoE on multiple N- and C-terminal sites. These phosphorylation events stabilise RhoE, which functions to antagonise RhoA-induced stress fibre assembly. Here, we provide a molecular explanat...