January 2008

A study on antibody-mediated enhancement of caprine arthritis encephalitis virus in goat synovial membrane cells

Antibody-mediated enhancement of caprine arthritis encephalitis (CAE) virus in goat synovial membrane (GSM) cells was investigated with regards to time of onset and severity of lesions. Homologous antibody was serially diluted to enhance the growth of the virus as this provided both optimal and subnormal concentrations of the antibody. The cells were incubated for five days and later stained with Giemsa stain. Marked...

Author(s):   Adebayo, I. A

January 2008

Morphine is an exogenous ligand for MrgX2, a G protein-coupled receptor for cortistatin

MrgX2 is reported to be expressed in a specific subset of dorsal root ganglion sensory neurons, and it is activated by the endogenous peptides, cortistatin and proadrenomedullin N-terminal peptide. Here, we show that morphine but not opioid peptides stimulated a dose-dependent increase of the intracellular calcium ion level in MrgX2-expressing cells. Naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist, did not influence these...

Author(s): Natsuyo Akuzawa, Hideru Obinata, Takashi Izumi, Shigeki Takeda

January 2008

Plasmodium falciparum multidrug resistance protein (MRP) gene expression under chloroquine and mefloquine challenge

The present investigation was carried out to identify and study the gene expression patterns of two novel Plasmodium falciparum Multidrug Resistance associated Protein (MRP) transporters belonging to the ABC protein family coded by the genes pfmrp1 and pfmrp2 inP. falciparum. Full sequencing resulted in the identification of four SNPs in pfmrp1 and eight SNPs and three insertions/deletions...

Author(s): Fátima Nogueira, Dinora Lopes, Ana Catarina Alves and Virgílio Estólio do Rosário