AIMS To determine why mucosal biopsy specimens of the gastrointestinal tract were taken and whether they were justified on clinical or pathological grounds. METHODS A prospective audit of 190 consecutive biopsy specimens received in a university hospital histology department over six weeks. RESULTS The 31 separate presenting symptoms included diarrhoea (34%), abdominal pain (16%) and rectal...

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A heat-stable microtubule-associated protein (MAP) with molecular weight of 190,000, termed 190-kD MAP, was purified from bovine adrenal cortex. This MAP showed the same level of ability to promote tubulin polymerization as did MAP2 and tau from mammalian brains. Relatively high amounts of 190-kD MAP could bind to microtubules reconstituted in the presence of taxol. At maximum 1 mol of 190-kD M...