Recent experiments show that membrane ATPases are capable of absorbing free energy from an applied oscillating electric field and converting it to chemical bond energy of ATP or chemical potential energy of concentration gradients. Presumably these enzymes would also respond to endogenous transmembrane electric fields of similar intensity and waveform. A mechanism is proposed in which energy co...

The development of techniques to cultivate human primary melanocytes in vitro has provided the technical foundation for understanding the biology of this cell. Human melanocytes require various growth factors and agents for proliferation in vitro. These compounds activate two major signal transduction pathways: a calcium- and phospholipid-dependent (protein kinase C or PKC) pathway and a cyclic...

C L∗ Q-W G† M N† H M∗ S M§ ∗Graduate School of Science and Engineering, †Faculty of Education, Yamaguchi University, 1677-1 Yoshida, Yamaguchi 753–8511, Japan §Human Genome Center, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo, 4–6–1 Shirokane–dai, Minato–ku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan §Corresponding author (Fax, 81-3-5449-5442; Email, [email protected]....