BACKGROUND The natriuretic peptide (NP) system plays a central role in the renal adaptations to acute volume expansion. However, the modulation of the NP system in chronic renal insufficiency (CRI) remains to be elucidated. In the present study, we evaluated cardiac haemodynamics, plasma type-B natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels and the expression of natriuretic peptide receptor A (NPR-A) and NPR...

PLOS Genetics | www.plosgenetics.org 1 March 2014 | Volume 10 | Issue 3 | e1004316 elegans Growth and Physiology. PLoS Genet 10(2): e1004156. doi:10.1371/ Figure 3. Phenotypic distributions of three quantitative traits for the parents, nearly isogenic lines, and npr-1 mutants. Box plots show the summary phenotype data of the two parents (Bristol in orange and Hawaii in blue), the two nearly iso...

The aim of this study was to compare, under resting conditions, the influence of chronic training in swimming or running on mean arterial pressure (MAP) and the involvement of the natriuretic peptide system in this response. Two-month-old male spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) were divided into three groups-sedentary (SD), swimming (SW) and running (RN)-and were trained for eight weeks unde...

This study investigated whether gene expression profiles of myofibroblasts derived from infarcted myocardium differ from normal cardiac fibroblasts. We compared the expression of cytoskeletal proteins in cultured ovine cardiac fibroblasts derived from infarcted (ID) and noninfarcted ovine myocardium (NID) and the levels of expression of the natriuretic peptide receptors (NPR)-A and NPR-B in res...

AIMS Preclinical and clinical data suggest an involvement of atrial natriuretic peptides (ANP) in alcohol-associated psychopathology. We now present first data on alcohol drinking behaviour in mice lacking a functional natriuretic peptide-A (NPR-A) receptor. METHODS NPR-A(-/-) and wild-type mice were given a free choice between water and increasing concentrations of alcohol (2-16%). A forced ...

This note deals with the structure of the class NPR introduced by L. Blum, M. Shub, and S. Smale (1989, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 21, 1 46). It is shown that, assuming NPR 3 PR poly, there exists a problem NPR"(PR poly) which is not NPR-complete (w.r.t PR poly reductions). It also clarifies the scope of a padding technique used in a former similar result by R. Ladner (1975, J. Assoc. Comput. Mach....

Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) exerts anti-hypertrophic effects in the heart via natriuretic peptide receptor-A (NPR-A). However, ANP mediated anti-hypertrophic activity is decreased in the cardiomyopathic conditions. In the present investigation the in vivo effects of angiotensin II (Ang II), a hypertrophic agonist have been studied on the ventricular expression level of NPR-A in Wistar rat ...

Natural isolates of C. elegans exhibit either solitary or social feeding behavior. Solitary foragers move slowly on a bacterial lawn and disperse across it, while social foragers move rapidly on bacteria and aggregate together. A loss-of-function mutation in the npr-1 gene, which encodes a predicted G protein-coupled receptor similar to neuropeptide Y receptors, causes a solitary strain to take...

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has complex, naturally variable behavioral responses to environmental oxygen, food, and other animals. C. elegans detects oxygen through soluble guanylate cyclase homologs (sGCs) and responds to it differently depending on the activity of the neuropeptide receptor NPR-1: npr-1(lf) and naturally isolated npr-1(215F) animals avoid high oxygen and aggregate in t...