A method for simultaneous determination of (I) the blood flows to the organs and (II) the cardiac output

A method is presented for the simultaneous determination of (i) the blood flow to the organs and (ii) the cardiac output. Part I of the paper deals with the analysis of ann compartment (organ) vascular system model. The data, employed in the analysis, consists of continuous monitoring of the amounts of indicatorM _i in the organs (or compartments). An analysis for determination of the cardiac output and the absolute flows to the organs is presented. Since it is difficult to isolate certain organ systems and measure the amounts of indicator in them exclusively, a more realistic model of then compartment vascular system is presented in Part II. Herein, the analysis has accounted for the finite transit time, of the indicator, from one organ system to another. Further, estimation theory is employed to make estimates of blood flow to different organs by taking note of (i) the measurement errors due to the detectors' monitoring (for an organ system) some combination ofM _i 's instead of theM _i for the particulari ^th organ and (ii) noise uncertainties introduced by the measuring instruments.     

Synthesis and biological evaluation of sulfonylurea and thiourea derivatives substituted with benzenesulfonamide groups as potential hypoglycemic agents

A novel class of sulfonylurea and thiourea derivatives substituted with benzenesulfonamide groups were designed and synthesized. The target compounds were assayed for the effects on the insulin release of isolated rat pancreatic islets and the glucose transport in adipocytes of rats. Some of them exhibited high potency. Compound 10 also had potent antiplatelet activity and showed an excellent property to protect collagen–epinephrine-induced mice mortality as well as plasma glucose-lowering activity in vivo. The preliminary pharmacological profile of compound 10 showed that it might be useful in the treatment of diabetics with cardiovascular and nephropathy complications.     

Structural analysis of inhibition of <Emphasis Type="Italic">E. coli</Emphasis> methionine aminopeptidase: implication of loop adaptability in selective inhibition of bacterial enzymes

Background  

Methionine aminopeptidase is a potential target of future antibacterial and anticancer drugs. Structural analysis of complexes of the enzyme with its inhibitors provides valuable information for structure-based drug design efforts.     

The dorsal protein is distributed in a gradient in early Drosophila embryos

dorsal is one of the maternally active dorsal-ventral polarity genes of Drosophila and is closely related to the vertebrate proto-oncogene c-rel. Genetic experiments suggest that dorsal represents one of the last (if not the last) steps in the maternal pathway involved in establishing dorsal-ventral polarity in the early embryo. Even though the dorsal RNA is uniformly distributed in the embryo, we have found that the dorsal protein is specifically localized in peripheral nuclei of syncytial and cellular blastoderm stage embryos, and it is distributed in a ventral-to-dorsal gradient. These findings suggest possible mechanisms for how the dorsal protein may communicate maternal positional information to the zygotic genome.     

Isolation, purification, and characterization of pregnancy-specific protein B from elk and moose placenta.

Pregnancy-specific protein B (PSPB) was isolated, purified, and partially characterized from elk and moose placenta. The procedure, which was monitored by bovine PSPB (bPSPB) RIA, included homogenization and extraction in aqueous solution, acidic and ammonium sulfate precipitation, and ion exchange, gel filtration, and affinity chromatographies. The estimated molecular sizes of moose PSPB (mPSPB) were 58 kDa and 31 kDa, and of elk PSPB (ePSPB) were 57 kDa, 45 kDa, and 31 kDa by SDS-PAGE. The isoelectric points of mPSPB were 4.8, 6.6, and 6.7, and of ePSPB were 4.8, 4.9, 6.1, and 6.2 as determined by isoelectric focusing and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. The carbohydrate contents of mPSPB and ePSPB were approximately 3.15% and 4.98%, respectively. Although ePSPB and mPSPB were recognized by anti-bPSPB in an Ouchterlony double immunodiffusion test, they were found to share identical epitopes and partial identities compared to bPSPB. After treatment at different temperatures (20-60 degrees C) for 1 h, the immunoreactivities of ePSPB and mPSPB in serum were very stable. Only ePSPB in serum treated at 60 degrees C lost some immunoreactivity. After alteration of serum pH (pH 3-11) for 2 h, the immunoreactivities of ePSPB and mPSPB became lower at pH 3 and 4, and remained stable from pH 5 to 11. These data show that moose and elk PSPB have properties similar to those of bovine and ovine PSPB.