An interaction between actinand myosin-like proteins and its implication in cellular motilities have been suggested in a variety of cells other than muscle (reviewed by Taylor, 1972, and by Rebhun, 1972) . Actually, those proteins have been extracted and purified from certain kinds of cells . They may be located mainly in the cell cortex (Ishikawa et al ., 1969) . In sea urchin eggs, although a...

Down syndrome (DS) patients present with morphological abnormalities in brain development, leading to mental retardation. Given the importance of actin cytoskeleton to form the basis of various cell functions, the regulation of actin system is crucial during brain development. We therefore aimed to study the expression levels of actin binding proteins in fetal DS and control cortex. We evaluate...

Bleb-based cell motility proceeds by the successive inflation and retraction of large spherical membrane protrusions ("blebs") coupled with substrate adhesion. In addition to their role in motility, cellular blebs constitute a remarkable illustration of the dynamical interactions between the cytoskeletal cortex and the plasma membrane. Here we study the bleb-based motions of Entamoeba histolyti...

Introduction: Beta-actin is a housekeeping gene, which is used as an internal standard in various biological studies. Recently, it was reported that the expression of commonly used housekeeping genes including ß–actin changes in disease states or under certain experimental conditions. Based on the reports about the effects of sex hormones on the expression of the ß- actin gene, in this study...

Actins play essential roles in cellular morphogenesis. In mice, the t-actin 1 and 2 genes, which encode actin-like proteins, are specifically expressed in haploid germ cells. Both T-ACTIN 1/ACTLB and T-ACTIN 2/ACTL7A have also been cloned as orthologous genes in humans; they are present on chromosome 9q31.3 as intronless genes. Defects of germ cell-specific genes can introduce infertility witho...