The importance of the cAMP signaling pathway in the modulation of ethanol sensitivity has been suggested by studies in organisms from Drosophila melanogaster to man. However, the involvement of specific isoforms of adenylyl cyclase (AC), the molecule that converts ATP to cAMP, has not been systemically determined in vivo. Because AC1 and AC8 are the only AC isoforms stimulated by calcium, and e...

Neuropathic pain, often caused by nerve injury, is commonly observed among patients with different diseases. Because its basic mechanisms are poorly understood, effective medications are limited. Previous investigations of basic pain mechanisms and drug discovery efforts have focused mainly on early sensory neurons such as dorsal root ganglion and spinal dorsal horn neurons, and few synaptic-le...

The minimum structural requirements for peptide interactions with major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules and with T cell receptors (TCRs) were examined. In this report we show that substituting alanines at all but five amino acids in the myelin basic protein (MBP) peptide Ac1-11 does not alter its ability to bind A alpha uA beta u (MHC class II molecules), to stimulate specif...

This is the first part of a two-report mini-series focussing on issues in the evaluation of annotations. In this theoretically-oriented report we lay out the relevant statistical background for reliability studies, evaluate some pertaining approaches and also sketch some arguments that may lend themselves to the development of an original statistic. A description of the project background, incl...

In this paper we prove that deciding whether a distributed system (represented as a coloured digraph with n nodes) has weak sense of direction is in AC1 (using n6 processors). Moreover, we show that deciding sense of direction is in P. Our algorithms can also be used in order to decide in AC1 whether a coloured graph is a Cayley colour graph.

AIM To determine the inter-observer reproducibility of 15 tests used for predicting difficult tracheal intubation (DI). MATERIAL AND METHODS Following local ethics committee approval and informed consent, 101 volunteers were examined by two assessors using 15 tests for predicting DI. The two assessors who were blinded to the results of the other, examined each volunteer independently. Cohen's...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) play an important role in the innate defense mechanisms in humans and animals. We have isolated and studied a set of antimicrobial peptides from leukocytes of the Russian sturgeon Acipenser gueldenstaedtii belonging to a subclass of chondrosteans, an ancient group of bony fish. Structural analysis of the isolated peptides, designated as acipensins (Ac), revealed in...