Glomerular hyperfiltration, altered tubular function, and shifts in electrolyte-fluid balance are among the hallmark renal physiologic changes that characterize a healthy pregnancy. These adjustments are not only critical to maternal and fetal well being, but also provide the clinical context for identifying gestational aberrations in renal function and electrolyte composition. Systemic vasodil...

Sharma, Kumar, Anthony Cook, Matt Smith, Cathryn Valancius, and Edward W. Inscho. TGFimpairs renal autoregulation via generation of ROS. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol 288: F1069–F1077, 2005. First published January 11, 2005; doi:10.1152/ajprenal.00345.2004.— Impaired autoregulation in chronic kidney disease can result in elevation of glomerular capillary pressure and progressive glomerular damage;...

the six bilayer spanning domains are connected by five Introduction loops (A–E in Figure 1). The molecule consists of two repeats of three a-helices which are 180° mirror images An essential function of the mammalian kidney is its of each other (Figure 1). Each repeat contains the ability to conserve or excrete free water independent highly conserved family characteristic asparagineof changes i...

Mesangial cells (MCs) play a central role in the physiology and pathophysiology of endothelin-1 (ET-1) in the kidney. MCs release ET-1 in response to a variety of factors, many of which are elevated in glomerular injury. MCs also express ET receptors, activation of which leads to a complex signaling cascade with resultant stimulation of MC hypertrophy, proliferation, contraction, and extracellu...

Multiphoton excitation fluorescence microscopy is a state-of-the-art confocal imaging technique ideal for deep optical sectioning of living tissues. It is capable of performing ultrasensitive, quantitative imaging of organ functions in health and disease with high spatial and temporal resolution which other imaging modalities cannot achieve. For more than a decade, multiphoton microscopy has be...

Translation, a process of generating a peptide from the codons present in messenger RNA, can be a site of independent regulation of protein synthesis; it has not been well studied in the kidney. Translation occurs in three stages (initiation, elongation, and termination), each with its own set of regulatory factors. Mechanisms controlling translation include small inhibitory RNAs such as microR...

© 2012 Eaton This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits distribution of derivative works, making multiple copies, distribution, public display, and publicly performance, provided the original work is properly cited. This license requires credit ...

Urinary extracellular vesicles (uEVs) are released from all regions of the kidney's nephron and from other cells that line the urinary tract. Extracellular vesicles retain proteomic and transcriptomic markers specific to their cell of origin and so represent a potential reservoir for kidney disease biomarker discovery. Exosomes, a subtype of uEVs, are distinguished from other vesicles by featur...

This essay looks at the historic significance of an APS classic paper (http://www.the-aps.org/publications/classics/) that is freely available online: Falk G. Maturation of renal function in infant rats. Am J Physiol 181: 157-170, 1955 (http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/181/1/157).

The comparative approach has proved important many times in understanding renal function and continues to offer possible approaches to unsolved problems today, in three general areas. (1) Quantification of glomerular ultrafiltration. In contrast to the complex capillary network in the mammalian glomerulus, the glomerulus of the superficial loopless (reptilian-type) avian nephrons consists of a ...