RATIONALE Previous studies modulating pharyngeal muscle activity with pharmacologic approaches have targeted membrane receptors on pharyngeal motoneurons. Whether modulation of intracellular pathways can increase pharyngeal muscle activity, however, has not been investigated but is relevant to pharmacologic treatments of obstructive sleep apnea. OBJECTIVES To determine if modulating the secon...

The presence of sex differences in myocardial β-adrenergic responsiveness is controversial, and limited studies have addressed the mechanism underlying these differences. Studies were performed using isolated perfused hearts from male, intact female and ovariectomized female mice to investigate sex differences and the effects of ovarian hormone withdrawal on β-adrenergic receptor function. Fema...

OBJECTIVE To establish the role of TRPV1 receptor in the antinociceptive effect of natural alkamides (i.e. affinin, longipinamide A, longipenamide A and longipenamide B) isolated from Heliopsis longipes (A. Gray) S.F. Blake and some related synthetic alkamides (i.e. N-isobutyl-feruloylamide and N-isobutyl-dihydroferuloylamide). METHODS The orofacial formalin test was used to assess the antino...

The anionic conductance across toad (Bufo viridis) skin was studied using the voltage-clamp technique following long-term (more than 10 days) acclimation to NaCl and KCl solutions. The non-specific baseline conductance was approximately 0.6 mS cm(-)(2) and was similar in skins from all acclimation conditions. The voltage-activated Cl(-) conductance (G(Cl)) was maximal in skins from distilled-wa...

Thirty-seven basidiomycetous yeasts belonging to 30 species of seven genera were grown on media containing l-cysteine or l-methionine as sole nitrogen sources with the objective of evaluating volatile organic sulfur compound (VOSC) production. The headspace of yeast cultures was analyzed by the solid-phase microextraction (SPME) sampling method, and volatile compounds were quantified and identi...

We have previously demonstrated that tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) could stimulate colonic and pancreatic anion secretion. The present study investigated the signaling pathways and cellular mechanisms underlying the effect of TMP using human colonic Caco-2 cells, with permeabilized apical or basolateral membranes, in conjunction with Ussing chamber technique, intracellular cAMP and Ca2+ measurement...

Growth and development of a wild-type Sclerotinia sclerotiorum isolate were examined in the presence of various pharmacological compounds to investigate signal transduction pathways that influence the development of sclerotia. Compounds known to increase endogenous cyclic AMP (cAMP) levels in other organisms by inhibiting phosphodiesterase activity (caffeine and 3-isobutyl-1-methyl xanthine) or...

We have used a transient transfection system with a cytomegalovirus-based vector expressing high levels of biologically active human estrogen receptor (ER) in COS-1 cells to study the phosphorylation of human ER and to identify major hormone-regulated phosphorylation sites. The features of phosphorylation of the wild-type ER were very similar to those previously observed for the endogenous ER i...

Phosphodiesterases (PDEs) are critical regulators of cyclic nucleotides in the heart. In ventricular myocytes, the L-type Ca(2+) current (I(Ca,L)) is a major target of regulation by PDEs, particularly members of the PDE2, PDE3 and PDE4 families. Conversely, much less is known about the roles of PDE2, PDE3 and PDE4 in the regulation of action potential (AP) properties and I(Ca,L) in the sinoatri...

Transient changes in retinal oxygen in response to light stimuli were studied to further understand the light-evoked change in oxygen consumption. Double-barreled microelectrodes, which measured oxygen and local voltage simultaneously, were positioned near the photoreceptor inner segments of the toad neural retina-retinal pigment epithelium-choroid preparation. Light-evoked oxygen responses wer...