To examine the role of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling in chondrocytes during endochondral ossification, the dominant negative (DN) forms of BMP receptors were introduced into immature and mature chondrocytes isolated from lower and upper portions of chick embryo sternum, respectively. We found that control sternal chondrocyte populations expressed type IA, IB, and II BMP receptors a...

Objective. Glomerular mesangial expansion and podocyte loss are important early features of diabetic nephropathy (DN) whereas tubulointerstitial injury and fibrosis are critical for progression of DN to kidney failure. Therefore, we analyzed the expression of genes in glomeruli and tubulointerstitium in kidney biopsies from DN patients to identify pathways that may be activated in humans but ar...

Spatial patterns of soil dN reflect variation in rates of N-cycling processes across landscapes. However, the manner in which soil dN is affected by vegetation and topoedaphic properties under nonsteady state conditions is understood poorly. Here we propose and evaluate a conceptual model that explains how soil dN values will respond to changes in disturbance regimes (intensification of grazing...

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is the major life-threatening complication of diabetes. Abnormal permselectivity of glomerular basement membrane (GBM) plays an important role in DN pathogenesis. Heparanase is the predominant enzyme that degrades heparan sulfate (HS), the main polysaccharide of the GBM. Loss of GBM HS in diabetic kidney was associated with increased glomerular expression of heparanase...

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is one of the most common diabetic microvascular complications and is defined as a rise in urine albumin excretion (UAE) rate and progressive renal function loss. Now albuminuria is considered the gold standard of onset or progression of DN. However albuminuria has certain limitations, clinical practice suggested detectable albuminuria is later than the onset of DN and...

BACKGROUND Microalbuminuria is the earliest clinical sign of diabetic nephropathy (DN). However, earlier markers as a diagnostic tool for DN was required for the invalid of microalbuminuria in some cases. Osteoinductive factor (OIF) was known to be an essential component of the normal vascular matrix. We aimed to research the relationship between DN and OIF, and discussed the availability of th...

Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease in many countries. The animal models that recapitulate human DN undoubtedly facilitate our understanding of this disease and promote the development of new diagnostic markers and therapeutic interventions. Based on the clinical evidence showing the association of eNOS dysfunction with advanced DN, we and others have creat...

In mice that express a transgene for the 2C T cell antigen-receptor (TCR) and lack a recombinase-activating gene (2C(+)RAG(-/-) mice) most of the peripheral T cells are CD8(+), a few are CD4(+), and a significant fraction are CD4(-)CD8(-) [double negative (DN)]. The DN 2C cells, like DN T cells that are abundant in various other alphabeta TCR-transgenic mice, appear to be derived directly from ...