BACKGROUND The regulation of the cardiac neutral endopeptidase (EC 24.10, NEP) that degrades bradykinin and natriuretic peptides has been investigated in human cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. Methods and Results- NEP mRNA was quantitated by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in left ventricular biopsies from patients with aortic valve stenosis (AS, n=19) and heart failure due to d...

Communication networks shared by selfish users are considered and modeled as noncooperative repeated games. Each user is interested only in optimizing its own performance by controlling the routing of its load. We investigate the existence of a Nash equilibrium point (NEP) that achieves the system-wide optimum cost. The existence of a subgame-perfect NEP that not only achieves the system-wide o...

Communication networks shared by sellsh users are considered and modeled as nonco-operative repeated games. Each user is interested only in optimizing its own performance by controlling the routing of its load. We investigate the existence of a Nash equilibrium point (NEP) that achieves the system-wide optimum cost. The existence of a subgame-perfect NEP that not only achieves the system-wide o...

Chloroplast genes of higher plants are transcribed by two types of RNA polymerase that are encoded by nuclear (NEP (nuclear-encoded plastid RNA polymerase)) or plastid (PEP (plastid-encoded plastid RNA polymerase)) genomes. NEP is largely responsible for the transcription of housekeeping genes during early chloroplast development. Subsequent light-dependent chloroplast maturation is accompanied...

We have identified a neuronal-restricted precursor (NRP) cell that expresses E-NCAM (high polysialic-acid NCAM) and is morphologically distinct from multipotent neuroepithelial (NEP) cells (Kalyani et al., 1997) and spinal glial progenitors (Rao and Mayer-Proschel, 1997). NRP cells self renew over multiple passages in the presence of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) and ...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by an accumulation of Amyloid-β (Aβ), released by sequential proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) by β - and γ-secretase. Aβ peptides can aggregate, leading to toxic Aβ oligomers and amyloid plaque formation. Aβ accumulation is not only dependent on de novo synthesis but also on Aβ degradation. Neprilysin (NEP) is one of the maj...

Neutral endopeptidase-24.11 (NEP; neprilysin; EC 3.4.24.11) and endothelin-converting enzyme (ECE) are related zinc metallopeptidases involved in the processing of biologically active peptides. Only ECE, however, exists as a disulphide-linked homodimer. The covalent linkage in rat ECE is between Cys412 in each subunit, which is equivalent to Glu403 in rabbit NEP. Here we report that directed mu...

BACKGROUND According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there is a pandemic of obesity with approximately 300 million people being obese. Typically, human obesity has a polygenetic causation. Neutral endopeptidase (NEP), also known as neprilysin, is considered to be one of the key enzymes in the metabolism of many active peptide hormones. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS An incidental obser...

one of the most popular measures of ecological worldview, predicting environmental attitudes and behaviors is the new ecological paradigm (nep) scale developed by dunlap and van liere has been applied to measure children’s environmental attitudes across cultures. there is however some controversy about the cross-cultural applicability and the relevance of the nep scale items. this article refl...

BACKGROUND As with many chronic conditions, patients with neuropathic pain (NeP) are high consumers of health care resources. However, limited literature exists on the economic burden of NeP, including its impact on productivity. The aim of this study was to characterize health care resource utilization, productivity, and costs associated with NeP by pain severity level in US adults. METHODS ...