The benefits of physical loading to skeletal mass are well known. primary cilium has emerged as an important organelle in bone mechanobiology/mechanotransduction, particularly mesenchymal stem/stromal cells, yet the molecular mechanisms mechanotransduction poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrate that Gpr161 is a mechanoresponsive GPCR, localises cilium, and involved fluid shear-induced...

The septal organ, a distinct chemosensory organ observed in the mammalian nose, is essentially a small island of olfactory neuroepithelium located bilaterally at the ventral base of the nasal septum. Virtually nothing is known about its physiological properties and function. To understand the nature of the sensory neurons in this area, we studied the mechanisms underlying olfactory signal trans...

Expression of a constitutively activated version of the heterotrimeric G protein alpha-subunit Galphas results in the swelling and vacuolization of a specific subset of ventral nerve cord motoneurons of Caenorhabditis elegans. A second site modifier (sgs-1) that completely suppresses this neuronal degeneration has been isolated. sgs-1 was cloned and was shown to encode an adenylyl cyclase which...

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a cause of skin cancer and aging has been shown to affect variety biological phenomena. Whereas UV can induce local hormones that melanin synthesis, the mechanisms by which directly affects melanocyte biology independent DNA mutation, remain poorly understood. In this study, we examined effects on melanosomal pH metabolism in melanocytes melanoma cells vitro. We de...

Bicarbonate stimulates the activities of several class III adenylyl cyclases studied to date. However, we show here that bicarbonate decreased V(max) and substrate affinity in Cya1, a major adenylyl cyclase in the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803. This indicates that manifestation of the bicarbonate responsiveness is specifically modulated in Cya1.

We cloned a guanylyl cyclase of 280 kDa from the ciliate Paramecium which has an N-terminus similar to that of a P-type ATPase and a C-terminus with a topology identical to mammalian adenylyl cyclases. Respective signature sequence motifs are conserved in both domains. The cytosolic catalytic C1a and C2a segments of the cyclase are inverted. Genes coding for topologically identical proteins wit...

Intestinal epithelial lipid rafts contain ganglioside GM1 that is the receptor for cholera toxin (CT). The ganglioside binds CT at the plasma membrane (PM) and carries the toxin through the trans-Golgi network (TGN) to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). In the ER, a portion of the toxin unfolds and translocates to the cytosol to activate adenylyl cyclase. Activation of the cyclase leads to an incr...