Exocytosis of intracellular granules is critical for conversion of inactive, circulating neutrophils to fully activated cells. The p38 MAPK pathway plays a central role in neutrophil exocytosis, although its mechanism of action is unknown. We used...
Integrins are major receptors for cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix, and play key roles in various cellular processes including adhesion, migration, proliferation and survival. Apart from developmental and physiological events, integrins...
The chaperone heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) regulates physiologically and
pathological cellular processes, by binding and stabilizing kinases involved in basal
cellular functions and in cellular responses to stress, respectively. I hypothesize...
Respiratory syncytial virus is the leading cause of lower respiratory tract infection
in infants and currently lacks an effective vaccine or treatment beyond symptom relief.
The atomic force microscope is particularly well suited for imaging...
Through differential display PCR, Munc13-3 was identified as a gene whose relative expression in the visual cortex corresponds to critical period plasticity. Expression of the gene was low at the peak of the critical period and expression was high...
Spinal cord injury (SCI) can be divided into two distinct stages, an initial mechanical impact and a later "secondary injury" resulting from a cascade of cytokines triggering a spreading demyelination and apoptosis of neurons and glia...
Background: When rat salivary gland cells are cultured in vitro, they dedifferentiate within 24 h. Hypothesis: Growth factors will prevent de-differentiation of primary cultures of parotid gland cells, and they will induce differentiation of ParC5...
The goals of this dissertation is to further the understanding of the roles of two genes identified by differential display polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) of cat visual cortex as candidate genes to play a role in visual cortical plasticity....
Night vision--Genetic aspects; Vision disorders--Genetic aspects
Mutations in the NYX gene, encoding the novel protein nyctalopin, cause human congenital stationary night blindness type 1 (CSNB1). CSNB1 is an X-linked recessive condition and is identified by a loss of the electroretinogram (ERG) b-wave while the...
Congenital stationary night blindness 1 (CSNBl) is a genetic disorder characterized in humans by night blindness, low visual acuity and myopia. CSNB 1 is caused by defects in genes that are involved in signaling between photoreceptors and...
Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in Western societies. Thus, understanding the molecular mechanisms to reduce myocardial ischemia and limit infarction size are of great importance. Ample evidence has shown that...
Guanine-rich oligonucleotides (GROs) are being developed as a novel anticancer agents. GROs exhibit potent antiproliferative properties against several malignant cell lines and in established in vivo tumor models. In a recent Phase I clinical trial...
The current status of our knowledge of synaptic plasticity comes largely from studies of the hippocampus and the context of learning and memory. We remain largely ignorant of plasticity in other neural systems and contexts. The molecular basis of...
