15038 studies
The thymic gland is involved in immunologic and endocrinologic heomostasis of the body. Neonatal thymectomy of experimental animals leads to gonadal dysgenesis. Both eostrogen and androgen receptors have been identified in thymic epitelial cells, and…
BACKGROUND: Thymosin-alpha 1 is a biological response modifier that has been used clinically, alone and in combination with interferon-alpha for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B viral infection. Both immunomodulatory and immediate intracellular m…
Six phage clones containing gene members of the family of antimicrobial peptides named cathelicidins, were mapped to bovine chromosome 22q24, by means of fluorescence in situ hybridization. The mapping data suggest the clustering of cathelicidins int…
The peptide FA-LL-37, previously termed FALL-39, was originally predicted from on ORF of a cDNA clone isolated from a human bone marrow library. This peptide was synthesized and found to have antibacterial activity. We have now characterized and sequ…
Antibacterial peptides are important for non-specific host defence in many animals. They have been extensively characterized from mammals, amphibians, insects and chelicerates but have not so far been found in crustaceans. Here we report the presence…
Cathelicidins are a family of myeloid antimicrobial peptide precursors that have been identified in several mammalian species (Zanetti, M., Gennaro, R., and Romeo, D. (1995) FEBS Lett. 374, 1-5). Two novel bovine congeners have been deduced from cDNA…
Cardiomyopathy related to ethanol abuse is often accompanied by cigarette use. To examine if the major cardioactive component may intensify the abnormal function and composition induced by chronic ethanol, nicotine was administered orally, 2.5 mg bid…
Data available in the literature and the author's own findings of the effects of regulatory peptide (RP) and their analogues are summarized. MIF, TRH, and its analog PR-546, the paraopioid RP, leuenkephalin, dalargin, the ACTH analogue Semax, tafcin,…
Experiments on rats demonstrated that the low-intensity electromagnetic field (12.6 cm, 2375 MHz, power density 1 mW/cm2), motion sickness, and electroconvulsive shock provoked the retrograde amnesia in the passive avoidance test. The oxyracetam (100…
To understand the thymic hormone production in thymic tumors and the myasthenic thymus, we have studied the concentrations of two thymic hormones (prothmosin alpha and thymosin beta 4) in these tissues. A total of forty four thymus or thymic tumor ti…
Gelsolin and thymosin beta4 appear to be two important actin-associated proteins involved in the regulation of actin polymerization. It has been widely demonstrated that thymosin is the major cellular actin-sequestering factor shifting the polymeriza…
The role of ATP hydrolysis in the regulation of the actin cytoskeleton continues to be a subject of controversy. Since actin polymerization can occur in the absence of ATP, the energy of hydrolysis is not needed for filament assembly. Recent work has…
We present theoretical and experimental data necessary for raising specific antibodies for thymosin beta 10, a 43-amino acid residues peptide occurring in human tissues. We postulate that thymosin beta 10 contains three major antigenic determinants (…
Actin cross-linked between cys 374 and cys 10 via a disulfide-containing bridge, c-A, is completely unpolymerizable even in the presence of phalloidin. Upon the addition of dithiothreitol, c-A polymerizes with high yield, indicating that denaturation…
We characterized in detail the actin binding site of the small actin-sequestering protein thymosin beta 4 (T beta 4) using chemically synthesized full-length T beta 4 variants. The N-terminal part (residues 1-16) and a hexapeptide motif (residues 17-…
Binding sites of actin and thymosin beta 4 were investigated using a set of bifunctional thiol-specific reagents, which allowed the insertion of cross-linkers of defined lengths between cysteine residues of the complexed proteins. After the cross-lin…
A combination of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) spiking, Edman degradation, amino acid analysis and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) was applied for the analysi…
Thymosin beta 4 (T beta 4) is an actin monomer sequestering protein that may have a critical role in modulating the dynamics of actin polymerization and depolymerization in nonmuscle cells. Its regulatory role is consistent with the many examples of…