[Study of vestibular function in pupils of primary and secondary schools in Kanagawa Prefecture (sixth report)].
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M Miyahara.
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A new human rhabdomyosarcoma cell strain, designated KYM-1, has been established from a neck tumor found in a 9-month-old infant. The cultured cells were round and mainly free-floating or in a moniliform pattern with a population doubling time of 75 hours. In stained preparations, the cells were pleomorphic and had a single round or oval nucleus in non-striated cytoplasm. However, the intracellular presence of myogenic markers was clearly shown by enzyme-immunochemical stains. An ultrastructural feature of the KYM-1 cells was the presence of numerous intermediate filaments in the perinuclear area and around the Golgi complexes which were associated with abundant cell organelles and aggregates of glycogen granules. High viscosity of the spent culture medium was attributed to hyaluronic acid, identified by electrophoresis and hyaluronidase digestion, and immunological and biochemical analyses revealed that the increased concentration of plasminogen activator activity found in the culture medium was almost wholly of the tissue plasminogen activator type. The KYM-1 cells also contained high concentrations of alkaline phosphatase activity. Tumorigenicity of the cells was confirmed by heterotransplantation into hamsters treated with anti-thymocyte serum.
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Effect of Colcemid treatment of myeloma (X63-Ag8-6.5.3.) prior to fusion with mouse spleen cell was studied in terms of hybridoma formation. Spleen cells from BALB/c mice immunized with various soluble antigens were fused with the myeloma cells by using polyethylene glycol solution. Colcemid treatment of myeloma cells prior to fusion increased the average number of hybridoma colonies per well by 26-570%. The yield of hybridomas producing antigen-specific antibodies was also higher with the Colcemid treatment. The results suggest that most of the proliferative hybridomas are formed by fusion of cells in the M-phase of the cell cycle.
The mitochondrial dysfunction induced by anoxia in vitro was improved with chlorpromazine, cepharanthine, bromophenacyl bromide, and mepacrine without affecting phospholipid or adenine nucleotide metabolisms. The drugs inhibited lipid peroxidation by Fe2+, mitochondrial disruption by Ca2+, and membrane perturbation by lysolecithin, and retained the activity to control H+ permeability across mitochondrial membranes. The drugs appeared to preserve the functions by acting to suppress the development of membrane deterioration which may have resided in the deenergization of mitochondria in the absence of oxygen.
Two systems were used to generate collagen fibrils in vitro by enzymic cleavage of intermediates in the conversion of procollagen to collagen. In one system fibrils were generated by using procollagen NH2-terminal proteinase to cleave pNcollagen, the intermediate which contains the NH2-terminal but not the COOH-terminal propeptides found in procollagen. When pNcollagen was incubated with procollagen NH2-terminal proteinase, the NH2-terminal propeptides were enzymically cleaved from the protein, and there was an increase in the turbidity of the solution over and above the turbidity observed with pNcollagen alone. Electron microscope examination of the samples demonstrated that the increase in turbidity was associated with the assembly of collagen fibrils. The fibrils had a mean diameter of 104 nm +/- 51.7 S.D. or about the same as fibrils formed from pNcollagen alone. However, the fibrils formed by enzymic cleavage of pNcollagen had a more distinct gap-overlap pattern and they appeared to be more tightly packed than fibrils of pNcollagen. Varying the concentration of enzyme varied both the rate of enzymic cleavage of the pNcollagen and the rate of fibril assembly, but there was no consistent effect on the diameter or morphology of the fibrils. In the second system, fibrils were generated with a recently described procedure (Miyahara, M., Njieha, F. K., and Prockop, D. J. (1982) J. Biol. Chem. 257, 8442-8448) in which procollagen COOH-terminal proteinase is used to cleave pCcollagen, the intermediate containing the COOH-terminal but not the NH2-terminal propeptides found in procollagen. When incubated with procollagen COOH-terminal proteinase, the COOH-terminal propeptides were cleaved and collagen fibrils assembled. The collagen fibrils were unusually thick with a mean diameter of 1184 nm +/- 291 S.D. The large diameters of the fibrils made it possible to demonstrate by scanning electron microscopy that each fibril was comprised of a bundle of subfibrils packed into a right-handed helix. The fibrils frequently had branch points which appeared to consist of subfibrils which separated from the main axis of the structure. Also, the surface of the fibrils was scalloped at 270- to 300-nm intervals, suggesting that some of the collagen molecules on the surface were in a 4D staggered array. The results suggested the hypothesis that the order in which the NH2-terminal and COOH-terminal propeptides are cleaved in the conversion of procollagen to collagen may provide a mechanism for controlling the diameter, or both the diameter and morphology, of collagen fibrils.
Chronological studies on the respiratory function and membrane components of newborn rat liver mitochondria revealed that perinatal mitochondria retained considerably well-coupled oxidative phosphorylation that functioned in sites II and III prior to site I. The ratio of protein to phospholipid contents (mg/mumol) was low in these mitochondria, in which phospholipids were characterized by their high phosphatidylethanolamine contents (43% of the total phospholipids) and low cardiolipin contents (6% of the total), as compared to those of the adult. The fatty acid composition in major phospholipid species was also different from those of the adult. These characteristics altered with development, and the carbamylphosphate synthetase contents markedly increased from 12 to 20% of the total polypeptides in 10 days postnatal time. From these results structural and functional completion of mitochondria accompanying development is discussed from a mitochondrial biogenesis viewpoint.
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The influence of PSK on the metabolism of FT-207 was studied in patients with gastric cancer. The 5-FU concentration in the blood was determined 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour and 3 hours after intravenous injection of FT-207, 400mg. The blood level of 5-FU remained constant in 86% of patients after administration of PSK for 7 days, but decreased in 14% of patients. After administration of PSK for 8 to 14 months, no change in the blood level of 5-FU was detected. These results suggest that PSK has no distinct influence on the activation of FT-207.
A method for resolving an overlapped polypeptide pattern of sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was described. The procedure was essentially a Gaussian fitting using the least squares method, and could resolve more than 20 overlapped components simultaneously. The applicability to overlapped and shouldered patterns was evaluated using practical electrophoretic data with varying amounts of mitochondrial samples. The relative contents of respective polypeptide components gave a good agreement regardless of the loaded amounts.
In Physarum polycephalum, microplasmodia differentiated into spherules when cultures were aged for 8-10 days. Respiration rates of the microplasmodia decreased rapidly with ageing to a 90% decrease in oxygen consumption over 9 days. We studied this phenomena by isolating and characterizing mitochondria from microplasmodia and spherules at different stages of spherulation. Oxygen uptake by the isolated mitochondria decreased with spherulation. Morphological and biochemical analyses showed that mitochondrial differentiation to inactive state was characterized by a decrease not only in dimension but also of content (DNA, RNA and protein). Diminutive mitochondria contained small particle-shaped mitochondrial nuclei. The DNA content, measured by microscopic fluorometry, was about 1.15 and 0.58 X 10(-10) g, which corresponded to about 16 and 8 genome copies, respectively (e.g., 32 genome copies per mitochondrion at mitochondrial G1). Restriction endonuclease analysis showed that the physical structure and methylation pattern of the mtDNA had not changed although the DNA content per mitochondrion had decreased remarkably with spherulation. This showed that changes in the ploidy level of the mitochondrial nucleus during spherulation were due to reduction in the number of whole mitochondrial genomes.
Aggregation properties of type I pNcollagen from dermatosparactic sheep skin were studied by electron microscopy and turbidity measurements. pNcollagen was less soluble than collagen at low temperatures. Upon heating to 37 degrees C, it polymerized into thin, flat fibrils showing the same periodicity as collagen but with a less distinct gap-overlap pattern. The apparent critical concentration was 0.01-0.03 mg/ml at temperatures between 32-37 degrees C and was higher than that for collagen under similar conditions. The total turbidity change with heat polymerization of the pNcollagen was less than with heat polymerization of collagen under the same conditions. Also, the total change in turbidity showed a different temperature dependence and the kinetics of the reaction were slower than with collagen. However, the effects of protein concentration, ionic strength and pH on the rate of polymerization of pNcollagen were similar to those observed with collagen. The kinetics of polymerization of pNcollagen were explained by a model based on nucleation and growth processes which permits end-to-end association of fibrils, but only limited lateral association because of the presence of the N-terminal propeptides.
We studied the effect of glycyrrhizin, a compound known as an anti-inflammatory and antiallergic drug, on the membrane permeability change induced by phospholipase A2 (PLA2) and on platelet aggregation. Glycyrrhizin was found to inhibit the PLA2-induced carboxyfluorescein (CF) release from D,L-dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine (DPPC) liposomes. Part of this inhibitory effect of glycyrrhizin on PLA2 is accounted for by the physical state of the substrate, the DPPC liposome membrane. Glycyrrhizin also inhibited collagen-induced platelet aggregation in a concentration dependent manner, which may in part account for its inhibitory effect on PLA2.
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A new system was developed for studying the assembly of collagen fibrils in vitro. A partially purified enzyme preparation containing both procollagen N-proteinase and c-proteinase (EC 3.4.24.00) activities was used to initiate fibril formation by removal of the N- and C-propeptides from type I procollagen in a physiological buffer at 35-37 degrees C. The kinetics of fibril formation were similar to those observed for fibril formation with tissue-extracted collagen in the same buffer system, except that the lag phase was longer. The longer lag phase was in part accounted for by the time required to convert procollagen to collagen. Similar results were obtained when an intermediate containing the C-propeptide but not the N-propeptide was used as a substrate. Therefore, removal of the c-propeptide appeared to be the critical step for fibril formation under the conditions used here. The fibrils formed by enzymic cleavage of procollagen or pCcollagen appeared microscopically to be more tightly packed than fibrils formed directly from collagen under the same conditions. This impression was confirmed by the observation that the fibrils formed by cleavage of procollagen were stable to temperatures 1.5-2 degrees C higher than fibers formed from extracted collagen under the same conditions. When smaller amounts of procollagen proteinase were used, the rate of cleavage of procollagen to collagen was markedly reduced. The fibrils which formed under these conditions were up to 3 micrometers in diameter. Some appeared to contain branch points.
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