RATIONALE Chronic atrial fibrillation (cAF) is associated with atrial contractile dysfunction. Sarcomere remodeling may contribute to this contractile disorder. OBJECTIVE Here, we use single atrial myofibrils and fast solution switching techniques to directly investigate the impact of cAF on myofilament mechanical function eliminating changes induced by the arrhythmia in atrial myocytes membr...

In this study, the effects of caffeine (CAF) and SCH58261, a selective A(2A) receptor antagonist, on memory impairment and oxidative stress generated by aging in rats were investigated. Young and aged rats were treated daily per 10 days with CAF (30 mg/kg p.o.) or SCH58261 (0.5mg/kg, p.o.) or vehicle (1 ml/kg p.o.). Rats were trained and tested in a novel object recognition task. After the beha...

Anti-silencing function 1 (Asf1) and Chromatin Assembly Factor 1 (CAF-1) chaperone histones H3/H4 during the assembly of nucleosomes on newly replicated DNA. To understand the mechanism of histone H3/H4 transfer among Asf1, CAF-1 and DNA from a thermodynamic perspective, we developed and employed biophysical approaches using full-length proteins in the budding yeast system. We find that the C-t...

In modern high performance computers there is a trend towards a hybrid architecture. This hybrid architecture features distributed nodes, each of which contains multiple cores, over which memory is shared. A current challenge in HPC (High Performance Computing) is to find solutions which make the best possible use of hybrid architectures. One possible solution is the use of PGAS (Partitioned Gl...

A trypsin-like protease which is responsible for activation of Sendai virus was found in the chorioallantoic fluid (CAF) of embryonated chicken eggs. Treatment of the inactive form of Sendai virus, grown in LLC-MK2 cells, with CAF enhanced both hemolytic activity and infectivity for the cells. Soybean trypsin inhibitor restrained the enhancing activity of CAF. These results indicate that CAF co...

The caffeine-induced impairment of insulin action is commonly attributed to adenosine receptor (AR) antagonism in skeletal muscle. However, epinephrine, a potent inhibitor of insulin actions, is increased after caffeine ingestion. We tested the hypothesis that the insulin antagonistic effects of caffeine are mediated by epinephrine, and not by AR antagonism, in seven healthy men. On four separa...

In the study of fatigue, several methods have been used to calculate the development of central activation failure (CAF) and peripheral fatigue (PF) in the course of a sustained maximal voluntary contraction (MVC). This paper presents a model that enables simultaneous determination of CAF and PF during sustained MVC by using only force registration and superimposed electrical stimulation. In th...

Introduction Regeneration therapy using adipose-derived stem cells (ADSC) has been proposed in the treatment of skin aging. Myofibroblast plays a relevant role in the organization of the extracellular matrix of the damaged skin. A natural extract was derived from the eggs of the mollusk Cryptomphalus aspersa (e-CAF) that seems to play a role on skin repair. We have investigated the potential ef...

During the screening of selective DNA polymerase (pol) inhibitors, we isolated cycloartenyl trans-ferulate (CAF), which is a major component of γ-oryzanol, which is a byproduct formed during the production of Japanese rice wine "sake". CAF selectively inhibited the activity of mammalian A, B, and X pol families, but Y family pols were not affected. CAF did not influence the activities of plant ...

Previous studies have shown that cytosolic-free Ca2+ (Caf) increases to at least low micromolar concentrations during ATP depletion of isolated kidney proximal tubules. However, peak levels could not be determined precisely with the Ca2+-sensitive fluorophore, fura-2, because of its high affinity for Ca2+. Now, we have used two low affinity Ca2+ fluorophores, mag-fura-2 (furaptra) and fura-2FF,...