Kinetics of Mitochondrial Complementation

Mitochondrial complementation (enhancement of oxidative activity of mitochondrial occured when mitochondria of some inbrveds of eron were mixed in vitro. It was found that mixtures composed of various proportions of mitochondria of inbreds exhibited complementation. Extracts of mitochondria of one inbred did not promote complementation when they were added to infact mitochondria of inbreds exhihited complententation. Extracts of mitochondria of on einbred did not promote complementation when they were added to infact mitochondria of the second inbred. Serial dillutions of mixtures resulted in a rapid reduction of mitochondrial oxidation (QO₂ N) suggesting that intimale association between mitochondria was minimized by the dilution and that this decreased complementation. Similar dilutions of mitochondria from inbreds did not decrease their specific activity. Kinetics of mitochondrial oxidation were measured polarographically and it was found that complementation was measurable immediately (1 min) following the mixing. This suggested that physical contact between mitochondria was necessary for complementation.     

Steroid contraceptive use and pregnancy outcome

Contraceptive use in relation to pregnancy outcome was studied in 8,816 births in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, by examination of newborn infants and interviews with their mothers. Four thousand twenty-three women used no contraception before the index pregnancy, 1,229 used the injectable contraceptive Depo Provera (DMPA), and 3,038 used oral contraceptives prior to or during pregnancy. No differences were observed between these groups with respect to still births, multiple pregnancies, and birthweight. Women who used oral contraceptives had unexpectedly low rates of major defects and may have been affected by self-selection bias, whereas the noncontraceptors had rates similar to other populations. There was a significantly increased association of polysyndactyly among infants of DMPA users relative to the other groups, which was most pronounced in offspring of women under age 30 years, and persisted after exclusion of subjects with a family history or infants with multiple abnormalities. However, in five out of the ten polysyndactyly cases, the last injection of DMPA occurred more than 9 months before conception, and only three cases had definite gestational exposure. The association of chromosomal anomalies was also significantly increased in infants of mothers who used DMPA. The unrelated nature of these defects, the lack of confirmation from other studies, the distant preconceptional exposure to DMPA in many cases, and chance effects due to multiple statistical comparisons make a causal association unlikely. Other birth defects that had been previously reported in some publications to be associated with progestational steroid exposure, such as neural tube defects, heart malformations, and limb reduction defects, were not found in this study.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Neutron diffraction studies of digalactosyldiacylglycerol

The structure of the digalactosyldiacylglycerol bilayer is calculated using neutron diffraction data. The polar head group of this lipid is oriented parallel to the plane of the bilayer such that the galactose moieties are tightly packed at the bilayer surface into a 0.8 nm thick polar layer. The thickness of this layer is independent of water activity over a wide range (15-100% relative humidity). The constant thickness of both the galactose layer and the hydrocarbon layer constrain the structure factor amplitudes to lie on a single continuous transform for repeat periods between 4 and 5 nm.