Light sensitivity of the pineal has been retained in most vertebrates, except mammals. Retinal photoreceptors and pinealocytes share common components of light-dependent signaling pathways. In particular, an ion channel gated by cGMP has been electrophysiologically identified in chick pinealocytes; however, the physiological function of a light-sensitive enzyme cascade is not known, and primary...

Public transport in Delhi was amended by the Supreme Court of India to use Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) instead of diesel or petrol. After the implementation of CNG since April 2001, Delhi has the highest fraction of CNG-run public vehicles in the world and most of them were introduced within 20 months. In the present study, the concentrations of various criteria air pollutants (SPM, PM(10), CO...

CNG channels are cyclic nucleotide-gated Ca2 -permeable channels that are suggested to be involved in the activity-dependent alterations of synaptic strength that are thought to underlie information storage in the CNS. In this study, we isolated an endogenous RNA transcript antisense to CNG 1 mRNA. This transcript was capable of down-regulating the expression of sense CNG 1 in the Xenopus oocyt...

The cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) cation channel of rod photoreceptors is a heterotetramer consisting of homologous CNGA1 and CNGB1a subunits. While CNGA1 is indispensable for channel activation, the specific role of CNGB1a in this process has remained elusive. Here, we show that the N-terminal glutamic acid-rich protein (GARP) domain of CNGB1a and soluble GARP2, which corresponds to the proxim...

Background Cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels are members of the superfamily of pore loop cation channels that are activated by the binding of cGMP or cAMP. The channels are important cellular switches which transduce changes in intracellular levels of cyclic nucleotides into changes of the membrane potential and the Ca2+ concentration. CNG channels play a central role in the signal transdu...

Phagocytic functions of rat alveolar macrophages (AM) following intraperitoneal injection of conagenin (CNG) and of AM sub-populations fractionated by Percoll discontinuous gradient centrifugation were investigated. Phagocytosis of opsonized-sheep red blood cells (SRBC) following in vitro incubation with CNG showed a significant increase in a higher density of AM (fraction IV). In addition, pha...

Cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels link intracellular cyclic nucleotides to changes in membrane ionic conductance in a variety of physiological contexts. In the retina, in addition to their central role in phototransduction, CNG channels may be involved in nitric oxide signaling in bipolar neurons or in the hyperpolarizing synaptic response to glutamate in ON-type (depolarizing) bipolar cel...

The effect of conagenin (CNG) on myelosuppression induced by antitumor agents was investigated. The daily administration of CNG prevented reduction in the number of platelets (PLT) observed in peripheral blood of mice given mitomycin C (10 mg/kg) but did not prevent reduction in the number of leukocytes (WBC). The effect on PLT was also confirmed in mice given cyclophosphamide (100 mg/kg). In m...

Proper control of intracellular free Ca(2+) is thought to involve subsets of proteins that co-localize to mediate coordinated Ca(2+) entry and Ca(2+) extrusion. The outer segments of vertebrate rod and cone photoreceptors present one example: Ca(2+) influx is exclusively mediated via cGMP-gated channels (CNG), whereas the Na(+)/Ca(2+)-K(+) exchanger (NCKX) is the only Ca(2+) extrusion protein p...

Sequences specific for cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (CNG channels) have been amplified by PCR from cDNA of heart, aorta, sino-atrial node, cerebellum, C-cells and kidney. The complete amino acid sequence of a CNG channel from rabbit aorta has been deduced by cloning and sequence analysis of the cDNA. Synthetic RNA derived from this cDNA induces the formation of a functional CNG channel in X...