To increase our current knowledge on the nutritional regulation of growth and gene expression pattern in fish skeletal muscle, effect dietary macronutrient composition was assessed digestibility, nutrient retention, performance, mRNA levels key genes involved functionality, development muscle gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata). Long-term starvation decreased myogenic regulatory factors such as ...

We have previously demonstrated that activin is likely an ovarian mediator of pituitary gonadotropin(s) and local epidermal growth factor in their stimulating oocyte maturation and maturational competence in the zebrafish. However, the downstream events controlled by activin remain unknown. One possible mechanism is that activin may directly work on the oocytes to promote the development of ooc...

Follistatin has been reported as a candidate gene for polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) based on linkage and association studies. In this study, investigation of polymorphisms in the FST gene was done to determine if genetic variation is associated with susceptibility to PCOS. The nucleotide sequence of human follistatin and the protein sequence of human follistatin were retrieved from the NCB...

Introduction: The clinical studies have shown that the myostatin gene expression and its serum density occur more frequently in heart patients than in healthy individuals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of 8-week resistance and aerobic exercise on the myostatin and follistatin gene expression of myocardium muscle of healthy male Wistar rats. Methods: In this experimen...

Major advances in the genetics of vertebrate limb development have been obtained in recent years. However, the nature of the signals which trigger differentiation of the mesoderm to form the limb skeleton remains elusive. Previously, we have obtained evidence for a role of TGFbeta2 in digit formation. Here, we show that activins A and B and/or AB are also signals involved in digit skeletogenesi...

Dasarathy S, Muc S, Runkana A, Mullen KD, Kaminsky-Russ K, McCullough AJ. Alteration in body composition in the portacaval anastamosis rat is mediated by increased expression of myostatin. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 301: G731–G738, 2011. First published July 28, 2011; doi:10.1152/ajpgi.00161.2011.—The portacaval anastamosis (PCA) rat is a model to examine nutritional consequences o...

Forkhead box L2 (FOXL2) is a member of the forkhead nuclear factor 3 gene family and plays an essential role in ovarian growth and maturation in mammals. However, its potential effects and regulative mechanism in development of chicken ovarian prehierarchical follicles remain unexplored. In this study, the cooperative effects of FOXL2 with activin A, growth differentiation factor-9 (GDF9) and f...

In an attempt to identify autoantigens of synovium in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), we constructed lambda phage expression cDNA libraries from synovium and screened them by IgG purified from synovial fluids, both of which were derived from RA patients. As a result of this unique combination of the libraries and probes, we cloned follistatin-related protein (FRP) as a novel autoantigen in systemic ...