Epithelial cells of human fetal intestines and of a colonic carcinoma cell line (HT-29) exhibited intracellular and surface binding of polymeric immunoglobulins of IgA and IgM classes; monomeric IgA and IgG did not bind to these cells. Secretory component was identified as the receptor involved in the immunoglobulin binding. This conclusion was confirmed by the following experiments: trypsin ab...

Aquaporins (AQPs) play crucial roles in osmoregulation, but the knowledge about functions of AQPs Sinonovacula constricta is unclear. In this study, Sc-AQP1, Sc-AQP8, and Sc-AQP11 were identified from S. constricta, three Sc-AQPs are highly conserved compared to known AQPs. The qRT-PCR analysis revealed that highest mRNA expressions detected gill, digestive gland, adductor muscle, respectively....

Alternative splicing is an important component of tumorigenesis. Recent advent of exon array technology enables the detection of alternative splicing at a genome-wide scale. The analysis of high-throughput alternative splicing is not yet standard and methodological developments are still needed. We propose a novel statistical approach-Dually Constrained Correspondence Analysis-for the detection...

Splicing enhancers are RNA sequence elements that promote the splicing of nearby introns. The mechanism by which these elements act is still unclear. Some experiments support a model in which serine-arginine (SR)-rich proteins function as splicing activators by binding to enhancers and recruiting the splicing factor U2AF to an adjacent weak 3' splice site. In this model, recruitment requires in...

In prion diseases, abnormal prion protein (PrP(Sc)) is considered as the main component of the infectious agent. Delineation of PrP(Sc) conformation is expected to be a critical factor in understanding properties of prions. However, practical methods to differentiate between conformers of PrP(Sc) are inadequate. Here, we used two PrP(Sc)-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), 3B7 and 3H6, and f...

The conversion of normal cellular prion protein to disease-associated prion protein (PrP(Sc)) is a fundamental component of prion disease pathogenesis. The molecular mechanisms contributing to prion conversion and the impact of PrP(Sc) accumulation on cellular biology are not fully understood. To further define the molecular changes associated with PrP(Sc) accumulation in cultured cells, the tr...

Secretory component is found either covalently linked to exocrine immunoglobulin A or in a free form unassociated with other protein. Previous work has demonstrated considerable similarities between the two forms in terms of size, composition, and antigenic determinants. The comparison has now been extended to the primary structure of bound and free secretory components obtained from human colo...

INTRODUCTION This systematic review evaluates maternal tolerance and obstetric and perinatal outcomes following sildenafil citrate (SC) use in human pregnancy. DATA SOURCES Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase, and Google Scholar were searched. Relevant full-text studies including case series and reports in English were included. Publications were excluded if the pregnancy...

Alternative splicing creates a diversity of gene products in higher eukaryotes. Twenty-five percent (1,583/ 6,371) of predicted alternatively spliced transcripts can be detected using the NSF45K rice whole-genome oligonucleotide array. We used the NSF45K array to assess differential expression patterns of 507 loci showing at least a twofold change in expression between lightand darkgrown seedli...