"Pertussis toxin induces tachycardia and impairs the increase in blood pressure produced by alpha 2-adrenergic agonists"

Administration of purified pertussis toxin to rats induced persistent tachycardia, (observed in conscious rats but not after pithing); as little as 0.05 microgram/100 g produced a significant effect. Pertussis toxin-treatment did not affected the pressor response produced in the pithed rats by the alpha 2-adrenergic agonist methoxamine but markedly diminished the pressor effect of the alpha 2-adrenergic agonists clonidine and azepexole. A role of adenylate cyclase inhibition in the action of postsynaptic vascular alpha 2-adrenergic receptors is suggested.     

Recombinant human insulin.

Insulin is a well-characterized peptide that can be produced by recombinant DNA technology for human therapeutic use. A brief overview of insulin production from both traditional mammalian pancreatic extraction and recombinant bacterial and yeast systems is presented, and detection techniques, including electrophoresis, are reviewed. Analytical systems for insulin separation are principally based on reversed-phase chromatography, which resolves the deamidation product(s) (desamido insulin) of insulin, proinsulin, and insulin. Process-scale separation is a multistep process and includes ion exchange, reversed-phase, and size exclusion chromatography. Advantages and/or disadvantages of various separation approaches, as described by the numerous literature references on insulin purification, are presented.     

Changes in fiber composition of soleus muscle during rat hindlimb suspension

Chronic reduction of gravitational load in the rear limbs of rats to simulate the influence of near-zero gravity in skeletal muscles has been shown previously to elicit atrophy in the soleus muscle. Use of this model by the present investigation indicates that soleus atrophy was characterized by a decline in the number of fibers in groups that contained the slow isoenzyme of myosin and which were classified as type I from intensity of staining to myofibrillar actomyosin adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) and to NADH tetrazolium reductase. Furthermore total fiber number was not changed, whereas fibers containing the intermediate isoenzyme and those classified as type IIa increased. There results could be explained by either a change in the composition within existing fibers or a simultaneous loss of slow fibers and de novo synthesis of intermediate and fast fibers. Evidence for transformation included an absence of embryonic or neonatal myosin in muscles from suspended rats and the constant fiber number that was unchanged by 4 wk of suspension. Furthermore although fiber areas of both groups of type I and IIa fibers declined during suspension, variability of the fiber areas within each group did not increase.     

Primary structures of the mRNAs encoding the rat precursors for bradykinin and T-kinin. Structural relationship of kininogens with major acute phase protein and alpha 1-cysteine proteinase inhibitor

Three types of cloned cDNA sequences for rat low molecular weight prekininogens were isolated and determined by molecular cloning and sequence analysis. The deduced amino acid sequences indicated that one, termed K-prekininogen, represents the counterpart of the known low molecular weight prekininogen present in other mammals, while the other two, called T-prekininogens, contain a novel T-kinin sequence which was recently identified from rat plasma. Although T- and K-prekininogens are highly homologous with each other, both of the T-prekininogens contain methionine, instead of arginine or lysine, as an amino acid preceding T-kinin and exhibit two consecutive amino acid deletions in the preceding region of T-kinin as compared with K-prekininogen. The former finding accounts for the previous observation of strong resistance of T-kininogens to cleavage with trypsin or kallikreins, while the latter finding has been explained by the structural analysis of genomic clones in which T-kinin-coding exon is contracted at its intron junction. A partial nucleotide sequence reported recently for the rat major acute phase protein (alpha 1-MAP) mRNA was found to be extremely related to the corresponding portion of the rat T-prekininogen mRNA. Furthermore, consistent with the previous report of the structural identity of major acute phase protein and alpha 1-cysteine proteinase inhibitor, kininogen closely resembles not only the former but also the latter in the amino acid compositions. The interrelationship among the triad of these proteins has been discussed.     

Translational discrimination between the four RNAs of alfalfa mosaic virus. A quantitative evaluation

In an attempt to relate the translational characteristics of alfalfa mosaic virus (A1MV) RNAs to their structure [Ravelonandro et al. (1983) Nucleic Acids Res. 11, 2815-2826; Gehrke et al. (1983) Biochemistry 22, 5157-5164] we measured the relative affinities (discrimination ratios) of these RNAs for the initiation complex, in the wheat germ extract and in the nuclease-treated reticulocyte lysate, using a competition method designed by Brendler et al. [(1981) J. Biol. Chem. 256, 11747-11754]. As a prerequisite of this study we ascertained that the molecular mass distribution of the translation products was independent of RNA concentration in both translation systems. In the wheat germ extract the discrimination ratios are very similar for two strains of A1MV (S and B) which differ mainly by the presence (strain S) or absence (strain B) of a stable 5'-proximal hairpin. Hence this structure has no bearing on discrimination. Taking the affinity of RNA 3 as reference, the following orders of magnitude are found for the affinities of the different RNAs in the wheat germ: RNA 3, 1.0; RNA 1, 10; RNA 2, 60; RNA 4, 150. In the reticulocyte lysate the discrimination ratios are not significantly different from the wheat germ. Thus it seems that the mechanism of discrimination is essentially the same in the two translation systems, despite a difference in rate-limitation.