ROCK inhibition has been largely applied as a strategy to treat neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) and promising results have been obtained in the recent years. However, the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms are not fully understood and different models have been proposed for neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we aim to review the current knowledge obtained for NDDs identifying common...

The role of the RhoA/Rho kinase (ROCK) signaling pathway in cell survival remains a very controversial issue, with its activation being pro-apoptotic in many cell types and anti-apoptotic in others. To test if ROCK inhibition contributes to tumor cell survival or death following chemotherapy, we treated cisplatin damaged neuroblastoma cells with a pharmacological ROCK inhibitor (Y27632) or sham...

The natural chemical and physical variations that occur within volcanic rocks (petrology) provide critical insights into mantle crust conditions on terrestrial bodies. Visible/near-infrared (VNIR; 0.3–2.5 ?m) thermal infrared (TIR; 5–50 spectroscopy are the main tools available to remotely characterize these materials from satellites in orbit. However, accuracy of petrologic information can be ...

Original scientific paper To analyse the influence of joint angle, number and spacing on the strength and acoustic emission (AE) characteristics of rock mass, the uniaxial compression model of rock specimens was established using the micro particle flow PFC2D software platform. The intact rock parameters were determined via trial and error, joints with different angles, numbers and spacing were...

Reducing the time required for initial integration of bone-contacting implants with host tissues would be of great clinical significance. Changes in osteoblast adhesion formation and reorganization of the F-actin cytoskeleton in response to altered topography are known to be upstream of osteoblast differentiation, and these processes are regulated by the Rho GTPases. Rac and RhoA (through Rho K...

Loss of polarity and quiescence along with increased cellular invasiveness are associated with breast tumor progression. ROCK plays a central role in actin-cytoskeletal rearrangement. We used physiologically relevant 3D cultures of nonmalignant and cancer cells in gels made of laminin-rich extracellular matrix, to investigate ROCK function. Whereas expression levels of ROCK1 and ROCK2 were elev...

AIMS Deleted in liver cancer 1 (DLC1), a member of RhoGTPase activating protein (GAP) family, is known to have suppressive activities in tumorigenicity and cancer metastasis. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of how DLC1 suppresses cell motility have not been fully elucidated. Rho-kinase (ROCK) is an immediate down-stream effector of RhoA in mediating cellular cytoskeletal events and...

BACKGROUND Rho-associated kinase (ROCK), an effector of small GTPase Rho, regulates vascular tone via a calcium sensitization mechanism and plays a key role in the pathogenesis of hypertension. However, its role in vascular growth remains unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS Y-27632, a specific ROCK inhibitor, and the overexpression of dominant-negative ROCK suppressed the mitogen-induced DNA synthes...

Previously, we and others have shown that RhoA and ROCK signaling are required for negatively regulating integrin-mediated adhesion and for tail retraction of migrating leukocytes. This study continues our investigation into the molecular mechanisms underlying RhoA/ROCK-regulated integrin adhesion. We show that inhibition of ROCK up-regulates integrin-mediated adhesion, which is accompanied by ...

In this paper, we consider the use of texture granularity in the classification and retrieval of natural rock images. In rock science, the rock images are nowadays stored into large image databases. In the images, there often occur large grains which differ clearly from rock texture. The purpose of this work is to find grain rock images from the database. We present two approaches to this purpo...