The inhibitory effect of coagulation factor XIII (FXIII) on fibrinolysis has been studied for at least 50 years. Our insight into the underlying mechanisms has improved considerably, aided in particular by the discovery that activated FXIII cross-links α2-antiplasmin (α2AP) to fibrin. In this review, the most important effects of different cross-linking reactions on fibrinolysis are summarized....

Inflammatory responses after myocardial infarction profoundly impact tissue repair. Yet, efficient tools to serially and noninvasively assess cellular and molecular functions in postinfarct inflammation are lacking. Here we use multichannel fluorescent molecular tomography (FMT) for spatiotemporal resolution of phagocytic and proteolytic activities mediated by macrophages and neutrophils in mur...

Phylogenetically conserved serine protease cascades play an important role in invertebrate and vertebrate immunity. The mammalian coagulation system can be traced back some 400 million years and shares homology with ancestral serine proteinase cascades that are involved in, for example, Toll receptor signaling in insects and release of antimicrobial peptides during hemolymph clotting. In the pr...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Factor XIII (FXIII) Val34Leu, a common polymorphism in the gene for factor XIII, has been associated with a lower risk of stroke, myocardial infarction, and deep vein thrombosis. Ineffective fibrin cross-linking has been suggested to be causative. The aim of the present case-control study was to investigate the role of FXIII Val34Leu polymorphism in patients with retinal ...

Inherited deficiencies of plasma proteins involved in blood coagulation generally lead to lifelong bleeding disorders. The severity of these disorders is generally inversely proportional to the degree of factor deficiency. Among all the autosomal recessive rare bleeding disorders, which include afibrinogenaemia, factor (F) II, FV, FV + VIII, FVII, FX, FXI, FXIII, the combined deficiency of coag...

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is the most common gastrointestinal (GI) medical/surgical emergency of the newborn and a leading cause of preterm neonate morbidity and mortality. NEC is a challenge to diagnose since it often shares similar clinical features with neonatal sepsis. In the present study, plasma protein profiling was compared among NEC, sepsis and control cohorts using gel electroph...

PER cells, a transformed pulmonary epithelial cell line that adhered to a large extent to a fibronectin substratum, were found to be attachment-deficient to collagen I. Although fibronectin can bind to collagen I monomers and polymers, the addition of exogenous fibronectin in the attachment medium induced the adhesion of these cells to collagen I polymers but not to monomers. By adding the tran...

The characterization of naturally occurring mutations is one way to approach functionally significant domains of polypeptides. About 10 mutations have been reported in factor XIII (FXIII) A-subunit deficiency, but very little is known about the effects of the mutations on the expression or the structure of this enzyme. In this study, the recent crystallization of FXIII A-subunit and determinati...