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Earlier studies from our laboratory showed that a 182-kDa high-molecular-weight protein appeared during early stages of development of cardiac hypertrophy in animals subjected to aortic constriction. Later it was confirmed that this protein is a cardiac isoform of α2-macroglobu ...

Cardiac hypertrophy is a compensatory response to a variety of physiologi cal or pathological stimuli. However, prolonged hypertrophic responses may eventually lead to heart failure, arrhythmia, and sudden death. A number of intracellular signaling pathways have been implicat ...

The past decade has seen a surge in research devoted to understanding the role of cell death in the pathogenesis of various forms of cardiovascular disease. In particular, apoptosis has received much attention owing to the tightly regulated biochemical nature of this form of cell death and the re ...

Microarrays have helped researchers gain much insight into gene expres sion profiles in the context of many diseases including those in the injured heart. Our genomic investigations have been focused on elucidation of host gene responses to enterovirus infection. We have gained valuab ...

Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is a complex quantitative trait that has a strong prognostic value for cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. Cardiac mass is determined in part by the influence of genetic loci that are known as quantitative trait loci (QTLs), the localization of which ...

Myocardial hypertrophy is an adaptational process of the heart to increased workload caused by mechanical stress, growth factors, cytokines, catecholamines, or primary genetic abnormalities. Chronic induction of hypertrophy leads to the gradual deterioration of ventricu ...

β-Adrenergic receptor signaling, desensitization, and downregualtion are fundamental mechanisms that contribute to both normal and altered myocar dial function. The development of pharmacological and biochemical assays has provided the ability to measure alterations b ...

The sarcoplasmic reticulum Casn+2 ATPase (SERCA) plays a pivotal role in calcium cycling and the beat-to-beat function of the heart. Recent studies have shown that decreased expression and activity of SERCA are associated with end-stage heart failure in humans and in experimental animal m ...

This chapter describes the methods required for overexpression of the angiotensin II type I receptor (AT1) in cardiomyocytes of transgenic rats. This includes cloning of the transgenic construct consisting of the α-myosin heavy chain (MHC) promoter, the human AT1 cDNA and SV40 T-antigen s ...

Diabetic cardiomyopathy is a common chronic complication leading to height ened risk of heart failure among diabetic patients. In this chapter, we describe the methods for maintenance and breeding of two diabetic animal models, OVE26 and Agouti mice, for type 1 and type 2 diabetes, respectiv ...

Endothelial cells function as a highly regulated barrier between blood and interstitium. They play a central role in the regulation of vascular permeability by controlling the passage of liquid and nutrients as well as the transit of white blood cells (1,2). The endothelium is involved in the in ...

Airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells may be considered an important modulator of airway inflammatory responses, since they synthesize cytokines, chemokines, growth factors and metalloproteinases as well as support the adhesion of activated T lymphocytes. The study of the cellular and m ...

Mast cells were once thought to represent a single population of highly granulated secretory cells. However, with the development of mast cell isolation techniques for a diverse range of tissues, it became apparent that mast cells from different species and those from different tissues wi ...

Within the human lung, macrophages can be found in the pleura, interstitium, alveoli, airways, vasculature, and walls of the bronchi and bronchiols. This distribution does not simply reflect the ubiquitous nature of these cells, as the macrophages found at these different sites show subtle d ...

Neutrophils are manufactured in the bone marrow from stem cell precursors (myeloblasts) by a series of cell divisions. In healthy individuals only the mature neutrophils enter peripheral blood. They are the most numerous leukocyte subgroup, constituting half of the circulating white ...

There is increasing evidence that T lymphocytes play a central role in regulating both the initial and chronic inflammatory cascades of allergic asthma (1,2) and can also regulate baseline airway responsiveness in mouse models of asthma (3). In particular, activation of antigen-specif ...

Granulocytes play an important role in the host defense against invading microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi (1,2). For the killing reaction, these cells have an extensive machinery of cytotoxic effector mechanisms including phagocytosis, production of toxic oxygen metabo ...

Numerous techniques have been developed to measure gene expression in tissues and cells. These include coupled reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction amplification (RT-PCR), Northern blot (see Chapter 20), in situ hybridization (see Chapter 21), RNase protection as ...

Messenger (m)RNAs represent the information-carrying intermediates for protein synthesis. Northern blotting gives a snapshot of the relative abundance of an RNA transcript at a set time point by measuring the steady-state levels of an RNA transcript. The steady-state level of a partic ...

In situ hybridization (ISH) (also called “hybridization histochemistry” or “hybridization cytology”) was first described in 1969 by Gall and Pardue who used the technique to localize ribosomal DNA in Xenopus oocytes (1). In contrast to other techniques of hybridization (i.e., Northern ...