Recently, Xenopus oocytes have been shown to repair wounds using a contractile system composed of actin and myosin-II. The work underscores the importance of actin-based myosin-II contractility in cellular and supracellular 'purse strings' that function in diverse biological processes.

Skeletal muscle is a heterogeneous tissue composed of individual muscle fibers, diversified in size, shape, and contractile protein content, to fulfill the different functional needs of the vertebrate body. This heterogeneity derives from and depends at least in part on distinct classes of myogenic progenitors; i.e., embryonic and fetal myoblasts and satellite cells whose origin and lineage rel...

Colonic motility curve was continuously recorded in dog using a strain gauge force transducer and the curve was analyzed by fast Fourier transform. (1) The basic pattern of the colonic motility curve was a gradually increasing and decreasing contractile wave. (2) The frequency components of the basic contractile wave showed a trimodal distribution with peaks at around 1, 20 and 80 mHz. (3) The ...

OBJECTIVE Over half of twin pregnancies in US and UK deliver prematurely but the reasons for this are unclear. The contractility of myometrium from twin pregnancies has not been directly investigated. The objective of this research was to determine if there are differences in the contractile activity and response to oxytocin, between myometrium from singleton and twin pregnancies, across a rang...

Increased airway smooth muscle in airway remodeling results from myocyte proliferation and hypertrophy. Skeletal and vascular smooth muscle hypertrophy is induced by phosphatidylinositide-3 kinase (PI(3) kinase) via mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and p70S6 kinase (p70S6K). We tested the hypothesis that this pathway regulates contractile protein accumulation in cultured canine airway myocy...

Intestinal epithelial cells sense short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) to secrete non-neuronal acetylcholine (ACh). However, the roles of luminalSCFAs and epithelialACh under normal and pathological conditions remain unknown. We examined ileal contractile responses toSCFAs at different ages and their mucosal cholinergic alterations under inflammatory conditions. Ileal contractile responses toSCFAs i...

Objective: To assess the role of intravenous myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) in predicting functional recovery and regional or global left ventricular (LV) remodelling after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) compared with low dose dobutamine stress echocardiography (LDSE). Methods: 21 patients with anterior AMI and successful primary angioplasty underwent MCE and LDSE during the suba...