Rho-kinase, an effector of Rho GTPase, increases the contractility of vascular smooth muscle by phosphorylating myosin light chain (MLC) and by inactivating MLC phosphatase. A wide variety of extracellular stimuli activate RhoA via G protein-coupled receptors. In the present study, we demonstrate a novel cell-cell interaction-mediated Rho activation signaling pathway in vascular smooth muscle c...

Elevated blood pressure imposes increased mechanical stress on the vascular wall, and mechanical strain is a mitogenic stimulus for vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells. The role of mechanical forces in regulating the production of noncellular material by VSM cells for VSM cells of human origin remains undefined. We thus investigated the effects of chronic cyclical mechanical strain on extracellu...

Damon, Deborah H. VSM growth is stimulated in sympathetic neuron/VSM cocultures: role of TGF-b2 and endothelin. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 278: H404–H411, 2000.—Sympathetic nerves are purported to stimulate blood vessel growth. The mechanism(s) underlying this stimulation has not been determined. With use of an in vitro coculture model, the present study tests the hypothesis that symp...

al-Adrenergic receptors mediate vasoconstriction in the pulmonary and systemic vasculature. In sheep the in vivo vasoconstrictor response to al-adrenergic stimulation is less in the pulmonary circulation compared with the systemic circulation of the fetus, the response increases in both vascular beds with fetal and postnatal development, and it decreases in the systemic vasculature with pregnan...

Acid-sensing ion channels (ASIC) are voltage-insensitive, cationic channels that have recently been identified in vascular smooth muscle (VSM). It is possible that ASIC contribute to vascular reactivity via Na(+) and Ca(2+) conductance; however, their function in VSM is largely unknown. In pulmonary VSM, store-operated Ca(2+) entry (SOCE) plays a significant role in vasoregulatory mechanisms su...

Metalloprotease Vsm is a major extracellular virulence factor of Vibrio splendidus. The toxicity of Vsm from V. splendidus strain JZ6 has been characterized, and production of this virulence factor proved to be temperature-regulated. The present study provides evidence that two forms (JZE1 and JZE2) of Vsm protein exist in extracellular products (ECPs) of strain JZ6, and a significant conversio...

Objective: To develop a document indexing scheme that improves the retrieval effectiveness of free-text medical documents. Design: The phrase-based vector space model (VSM) uses multi-word phrases as indexing terms. Each phrase consists of a concept in the unified medical language system (UMLS) and its corresponding component word stems. The similarity between concepts are defined by their rela...

Elevated blood pressure imposes increased mechanical stress on the vascular wall, and mechanical strain is a mitogenic stimulus for vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells. The role of mechanical forces in regulating the production of noncellular material by VSM cells for VSM cells of human origin remains undefined. We thus investigated the effects of chronic cyclical mechanical strain on extracellu...

Sympathetic nerves are purported to stimulate blood vessel growth. The mechanism(s) underlying this stimulation has not been determined. With use of an in vitro coculture model, the present study tests the hypothesis that sympathetic neurons stimulate the growth of vascular smooth muscle (VSM) and evaluates potential mechanisms mediating this stimulation. Sympathetic neurons isolated from super...