Flavin-containing monooxygenases (FMOs) play significant roles in the metabolism of drugs and endogenous or foreign compounds. In this study, the regional distribution of FMO isoforms 1, 3, and 4 was investigated in male Sprague-Dawley rat liver and kidney using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Rabbit polyclonal antibodies to rat FMO1 and FMO4, developed using anti-peptide technology, and commercial...

Ouabain has recently been reported to be an endogenous mammalian substance released by the adrenal cortex and present in normal plasma. We have attempted to confirm and extend this observation. Using a ouabain radioimmunoassay developed in this laboratory, we fractionated by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) normal human plasma from healthy volunteers to determine the presence of ou...

Syntaxin is one of several proteins that may be involved in the docking of synaptic vesicles, synaptic vesicle recycling, and non-synaptic membrane trafficking. Presence of syntaxin has been reported in rat auditory and vestibular end organs. In the current study, we have examined the expression of message for syntaxin 1 in hair cells of the sacculus of the rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, w...

The cellular and subcellular distributions of the ionotropic alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazole propionic acid (AMPA)-preferring glutamate receptor (GluR) in monkey striatum were demonstrated immunocytochemically using anti-peptide antibodies to individual subunits of the AMPA receptor. These antibodies specifically recognize GluR1, GluR4, and an epitope common to GluR2 and GluR3 (desig...

Ecdysis, or the shedding of the old cuticle, depends on coordinated stereotyped behaviors, regulated by a number of neuropeptides. In the hornworm, Manduca sexta, two neuropeptides interact, namely ecdysis-triggering hormone (ETH) and eclosion hormone. We looked at the effects of ETH in vivo and in vitro, on the brain and the ventral nerve cord to determine the roles played by these hormones. W...

Atherosclerosis is a complex disease whose pathogenesis includes endothelial activation, accumulation of lipids in the subendothelium, formation foam cells, fat bands and atherosclerotic plaque. These mechanisms involve different cell populations intimate sub-endothelium, S-100 protein family plays role number extracellular intracellular processes during development lesions. The aim this study ...

BACKGROUND Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) is synthesized and stored in myocytes as prohormone(1-126), which upon release is cleaved into proANP(1-98) and alpha-ANP(99-126). In addition, cleavage of proANP(1-98) produces proANP(1-30), proANP(31-67), and proANP(79-98) fragments. ProANP(1-30) and proANP(31-67) have roles in fluid and electrolyte homeostasis. The aim of the present study was to d...

Na+/H+ exchange has been implicated in models of ion transport across the branchial epithelium of marine and freshwater fishes. In this preliminary study, we present immunohistochemical data using a polyclonal antibody raised against NHE3 which show NHE3-like immunoreactivity (IR) in the gills from a freshwater and a marine teleost species. In both species, branchial epithelial cells demonstrat...

A new cell shape index is defined for use with atomic force microscopy height images of cell cultures. The new cell shape index reveals quantitative cell spreading information not included in a conventional cell shape index. A supervised learning-based cell segmentation algorithm was implemented by texture feature extraction and a multi-layer neural network classifier. The texture feature sets ...