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Biomedical subjects

J W Walker

Publications and source records attributed to J W Walker.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1978

Retirement choice and retirement satisfaction.

Retirees from major corporations who reported they retired voluntarily were compared with nonvoluntary retirees to determine the individual factors that led to a voluntary or nonvoluntary decision to retire and the impact of that voluntary/nonvoluntary decision on retirement attitudes and satisfaction. Seven firms provided mailing lists of recent retirees, and 1486 respondents completed questionnaires. Voluntary retirees tended to be persons with higher income, occupation, and health status, who had more positive feelings about retirement and more family support for their decision to retire, compared with nonvoluntary retirees. Voluntary retirees were significantly more likely to have positive attitudes and higher satisfaction in retirement than nonvoluntary retirees. However, health status and preretirement feelings about retirement were more significant predictors of retirement attitudes and satisfaction than the voluntary/nonvoluntary decision. Implications of these findings for preretirement counseling and retirement policies are discussed.

Aged↗
PubMed1977

Developmental defects associated with glucosamine auxotrophy in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae mutants, unable to make D-glucosamine owing to a defect in the enzyme 2-amino-2-deoxy-D-glucose-6-phosphate ketol-isomerase (amino-transferring) (EC 5.3.1.19), show aberrations both in sporulation and in vegetative growth. They grow normally on a medium of yeast extract, peptone, and dextrose (YEPD) containing D-glucosamine (1 mg/ml), and such cells accumulate 4 to 5 times the amount of D-glucosamine present in wild-type cells cultured on YEPD alone. When such mutant cells are shifted to YEPD alone, they continue to increase in cell mass for about 10 hr (three to four cell cycles) and produce strings of beads in which the cells fail to separate. Although each of the "cells" contains a nucleus, electron micrographs of thin sections reveal that septation is defective apparently owing to the inability to synthesize chitin, which forms the primary septum in S. cerevisiae. The viability of such cultures drops rapidly after 3-5 hr, a fact attributable to lysis of the cells through wall defects in the septum region where gross disorganization is apparent. When the mutant cells grown on YEPD plus D-glucosamine are transferred to sporulation medium (1% potassium acetate), they proceed through meiosis to produce viable spores that appear to be altered only in the nature of the spore wall. The spores lack a dark-staining surface layer that is visible in thin sections prepared from wild-type cells, they are notably less hydrophobic than wild-type spores, and they are digested and lysed by glucanases that do not affect normal spores. All of these properties suggest that D-glucosamine is required for spore maturation and is used to synthesize a glucanase-resistant hydrophobic surface layer on the primary glucan spore wall. In agreement with this postulate, D-glucosamine synthesis and the activity of the isomerase do not appear until late in meiosis when tetranucleate cells are abundantly present in the sporulation culture.

Journal Article↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Kinetics of smooth and skeletal muscle activation by laser pulse photolysis of caged inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate.

Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP3) can stimulate skinned smooth and skeletal muscle to contract by initiating Ca2+ release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Whether this process is an integral component of the in vivo muscle activation mechanism was tested by releasing InsP3 rapidly within skinned muscle fibers of rabbit main pulmonary artery and frog semitendinosus. InsP3 was liberated on laser pulse photolysis of a photolabile but biologically inactive precursor of InsP3 termed caged InsP3. Caged InsP3 is a mixture of compounds in which InsP3 is esterified with 1(2-nitrophenyl)diazoethane (probably at the P4- or P5-position). Photochemical release of InsP3 induced a full contraction in both muscles at physiological free Mg2+ concentrations, but only in the smooth muscle were the InsP3 concentration (0.5 microM) and the activation rate compatible with the in vivo physiological response. Endogenous InsP3-specific phosphatase activity was present in smooth muscle and had about 35-fold greater activity than that in the skeletal-muscle preparation. Caged InsP3 was not susceptible to phosphatases in either preparation.

Animals↗