Despite our understanding that medial smooth muscle hypertrophy is a central feature of vascular remodeling, the molecular pathways underlying this pathology are still not well understood. Work over the past decade has illustrated a potential role for the multifunctional calmodulin-dependent kinase CaMKII in smooth muscle cell contraction, growth, and migration. Here we demonstrate that CaMKII ...

Here we report exquisitely distinct material properties of primary vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells isolated from the thoracic aorta of adult (8 months) vs. aged (30 months) F344XBN rats. Individual VSM cells derived from the aged animals showed a tense internal network of the actin cytoskeleton (CSK), exhibiting increased stiffness (elastic) and frictional (loss) moduli than those derived fr...

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) has been successfully applied in the context of software process improvement. However, its current adaptations from Lean manufacturing focus mostly on the flow of artifacts and have taken no account of the essential information flows in software development. A solution specifically targeted towards information flow elicitation and modeling is FLOW. This paper aims to ...

RATIONALE Decreasing Ca2+ sensitivity of vascular smooth muscle (VSM) allows for vasodilation without lowering of cytosolic Ca2+. This may be particularly important in states requiring maintained dilation, such as hypoxia. AMP-related kinase (AMPK) is an important cellular energy sensor in VSM. Regulation of Ca2+ sensitivity usually is attributed to myosin light chain phosphatase activity, but ...

To investigate the origin of seven Ardisia crenata Sims seedlings with non-variegated foliages (VSm) from a progeny of a mother plant with variegated foliage and red berries (VM), morphological and genetic characteristics of these seedlings were compared with mother plants of A. crenata with VM, plants with non-variegated leaves and white berries (WM), and plants with non-variegated leaves and ...

Naik, Jay S., Scott Earley, Thomas C. Resta, and Benjimen R. Walker. Pressure-induced smooth muscle cell depolarization in pulmonary arteries from control and chronically hypoxic rats does not cause myogenic vasoconstriction. J Appl Physiol 98: 1119–1124, 2005. First published October 22, 2004; doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00819. 2004.—Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, as well as prolonged re...

and sustainable-these are the features expected from enterprises in the 21st century [1]. To obtain these features enterprises need appropriate models of functioning. The Viable Systems Model (VSM) [2] has been suggested as an alternative for highly competitive enterprise models [3, 4, 5]. The VSM is rooted in the ideas of cybernetics [6] and comprises five mutually related systems [5]: System ...

Voltage-gated ion channels (VGICs) are membrane proteins that switch from a closed to open state in response to changes in membrane potential, thus enabling ion fluxes across the cell membranes. The mechanism that regulate the structural rearrangements occurring in VGICs in response to changes in membrane potential still remains one of the most challenging topic of modern biophysics. Na(+), Ca(...

Jernigan NL, Paffett ML, Walker BR, Resta TC. ASIC1 contributes to pulmonary vascular smooth muscle store-operated Ca entry. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol 297: L271–L285, 2009. First published May 29, 2009; doi:10.1152/ajplung.00020.2009.— Acid-sensing ion channels (ASIC) are voltage-insensitive, cationic channels that have recently been identified in vascular smooth muscle (VSM). It is po...