Environmental temperature is one of the most important abiotic factors affecting insect behaviour; virtually all physiological processes, including those which regulate nervous system function, are affected. At both low and high temperature extremes insects enter a coma during which individuals do not display behaviour and are unresponsive to stimulation. We investigated neurophysiological corr...

Protein phosphorylation is an important post-translational modification of proteins. Postmortem tissues are widely being utilized in the biomedical studies, but the effects of postmortem on protein phosphorylation have not been received enough attention. In the present study, we found here that most proteins in mouse brain, heart, liver, and kidney were rapidly dephosphorylated to various degre...

A number of cycling mammalian cells, such as NIH 3T3, contain abundant subsets of cold-stable microtubules. The origin of such microtubule stabilization in nonneuronal cells is unknown. We have previously described a neuronal protein, stable tubule-only polypeptide (STOP), that binds to microtubules and induces cold stability. We find that NIH 3T3 fibroblasts contain a major 42-kDa isoform of S...

We investigated the effect of stereotaxically transplanted human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) on behavioral change after traumatic cold brain injury in adult rats. Cortical lesions (n= 20) were induced by touching a metal stamp, cooled with liquid nitrogen, to the dura over the forelimb motor cortex of adult rats. The procedure produced a localized lesion, and the animals showed significant m...

It has been shown previously that in adult Rana esculenta, caught in nature, cold-shocked and brain-injured, encephalic cell proliferation is increased when capture and experiment occurred in spring and depressed when they occurred in autumn. Upon exclusive thermal stress cell proliferation appeared weak in spring and intense in autumn. The present study has investigated cold-shocked, but other...

The effect of desipramine, imidazole, thioridazine and trifluoperazine on blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability after a 24 hour cold lesion was studied in rats. Changes in BBB permeability were determined using a quantitative horseradish peroxidase (HRP) assay. The four drugs tested did not alter the quantity of HRP in the cortex of control animals, or in the contralateral cortex of test anima...

In Sapporo city, located in the northern district of Japan, it is very difficult to estimate the time of death of decomposed or skeletonized bodies found outdoors in cold season (November-April) because postmortem changes are markedly retarded in the season compared with warm season (May-October), and the bodies are often damaged and skeletonized by carnivorous animals such as wild dogs and fox...