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Biomedical subjects

S Morley

Publications and source records attributed to S Morley.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMed1995

Structure and expression of the bovine oxytocin receptor gene.

The gene for the bovine oxytocin receptor has been sequenced using a combination of clones derived from a bovine endometrial cDNA library from estrus and a bovine genomic DNA library, with confirmation of structure using reverse transcription PCR programmed by term myometrial RNA. The receptor belongs to the seven transmembrane domain family and predicts a protein of 391 amino acids. A comparison of the genomic sequence with the cDNA structure, as well as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis, shows there are two introns, one in the 5'noncoding region that appears to be differentially spliced in the bovine uterus and a conserved intron within the open reading frame between the regions encoding the transmembrane domains VI and VII. Northern blot analysis indicated three major transcripts in myometrium and endometrium in vivo at approximately 6.5 kb, 3.5 kb, and 2.0 kb. In situ hybridization analysis of uterine tissue at term showed highest mRNA concentrations in the endometrial epithelium, particularly in the deep glands, a pattern confirmed also at the immunohistochemical level by monoclonal antibodies raised against a human amino-terminal peptide. Further confirmation of the identity of the receptor was obtained by transient transfection of a reconstituted receptor construct into COS-7 cells. The expressed receptor was shown to have identical pharmacological properties in respect to various oxytocin analogs to the natural bovine endometrial receptor.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1995

Autobiographical memory and chronic pain.

The influence of chronic pain on the recall of autobiographical memories of pain and non-pain events was examined. Eleven chronic pain patients and 11 age- and sex-matched control subjects retrieved autobiographical memories to neutral and pain-related cue words. Patients and controls retrieved equal numbers of memories, but pain subjects retrieved more memories incorporating elements of physical pain. Analysis of the content of these memories revealed that patients and controls recalled equal numbers of memories of themselves and other people in acute pain and that the difference observed was attributable to the pain patients recalling memories of themselves in chronic pain. Memories of pain were recalled significantly faster than non-pain memories. The results are discussed with reference to the possible biasing effects of pain state on memory and the schematic processing of pain memories.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

A scale for the assessment of hedonic tone the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale.

BACKGROUND: Hedonic tone and its absence, anhedonia, are important in psychopathological research, but instruments for their assessment are lengthy and probably culturally biased. METHOD: A new scale was constructed from the responses of a large sample of the general population to a request to list six situations which afforded pleasure. The most frequent items were reviewed and those likely to be affected by cultural setting, age, or sex were removed. A pilot study led to an abbreviated scale of 14 items, covering four domains of pleasure response. This questionnaire was subjected to psychometric evaluation in new samples from the general population and psychiatric patients. RESULTS: The scale was found to have a score range that would distinguish a 'normal' from an 'abnormal' response. Validity and reliability were found to be satisfactory. CONCLUSIONS: The new scale, the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), is an instrument which may be recommended for psychopathological research.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Carbonic anhydrase is present in human oesophageal epithelium and submucosal glands.

Carbonic anhydrase (EC 4.2.1.1) activity was investigated in normal human oesophageal mucosa using the Hansson and Ridderstråle catalytic cobalt methods. The enzyme was detected in the cell membranes and nuclei and, to a lesser extent, in the cytoplasm of the epithelial cells of the mucosa giving a 'chicken wire' appearance. Activity decreased towards the lumen. Other stratified squamous epithelia--buccal mucosa, ectocervix and skin--gave a similar pattern. Acinar cells of oesophageal submucosal glands also exhibited activity for the enzyme, but the ducts did not. The formation of reaction product was prevented by acetazolamide and ethoxzolamide and by the omission of bicarbonate frm the substrate medium. Carbonic anhydrase in oesophageal squamous epithelium may be involved in the control of intra- and extracellular pH, while that in the glands is more likely to be concerned with bicarbonate secretion.

Carbonic Anhydrases↗
PubMed1995

Structure and organization of the bovine oxytocin receptor gene.

A DNA probe specific for the V and VI transmembrane domains of the bovine oxytocin receptor was initially prepared by reverse transcription PCR, and its structure and specificity confirmed by DNA sequencing. This probe was then used to screen a bovine genomic DNA library in bacteriophage lambda, and three positive clones were purified, subjected to restriction analysis and relevant fragments sequenced. Parallel to this, a cDNA library prepared using bovine endometrial RNA at the time of ovulation was screened by PCR employing the same primers as above. The longest cDNA clone was also fully sequenced. This clone still lacked, however, a substantial stretch of 5'sequence. The full transcript structure, and hence also the exon-intron organization, was then obtained by RT-PCR using primer oligonucleotides deduced from the cloned genomic sequence. All nucleotide sequence information was derived from a combination of two independent genomic clones, a cDNA clone and several independent RT-PCR reactions programmed by myometrial RNA, all in both strand orientations. The structural organization of the bovine oxytocin gene essentially conforms to that described for the human gene. Unlike the human gene, however, the 5'non-coding region of the primary transcript is interrupted by only a single intron, with a further intron in the coding region separating the sequences encoding the transmembrane domains VI and VII. The difference between this structure and that for the human gene suggests the existence of a differential splicing of 5' non-coding sequences.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1992

Paranoia and the defensive attributional style: deluded and depressed patients' attributions about their own attributions.

A data set of Attributional Style Questionnaire responses collected by Kaney & Bentall (1989) from persecutory deluded, normal and depressed subjects was added to a similar data set collected by the first author. The attributions made for hypothetical positive and negative events by the combined pool of subjects were then blind rated for internality by five independent judges. Whereas the internality ratings made by the subjects for their own attributions showed evidence of an exaggerated self-serving bias in the case of the deluded subjects, and an absence of such a bias in the case of the depressed subjects, the independent ratings showed no such group differences. These findings suggest that the differences in internality for positive and negative events observed on the ASQ between deluded, normal and depressed subjects may not reflect differences in the types of causal statements made by these subjects but differences in their attributions about their attributions. The relevance of this observation for attribution theory in general and attributional accounts of psychopathology in particular are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Graphical analysis of single-case time series data.

This article outlines the major principles for constructing good graphs and visual displays. Several methods for exploring time series data with graphical techniques are given: these include procedures for summarizing the central tendency of data, plotting linear and non-linear trend, and displaying variability and change in variability over time. We emphasize the need to explore single-case data thoroughly in order to highlight various components. Graphical analysis should be conducted in tandem with statistical analysis.

Data Display↗
PubMed1989

Relationship between radiological classification and the serological and haematological features of untreated pulmonary tuberculosis in Indonesia.

Immunological and metabolic responses were studied in 110 patients with newly diagnosed pulmonary tuberculosis and 32 healthy controls from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. The severity of lung involvement was assessed radiologically, but this was not related to the current features of cell mediated immunity or to those of many aspects of the serological response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, the patients with more extensive pulmonary tuberculosis showed higher titres of IgG2 antibody to whole killed M. tuberculosis and to the ML34 epitope shared by many species of mycobacteria. The patients with more extensive pulmonary tuberculosis showed a more marked metabolic response to infection as manifested by changes in serum levels of acute phase reactant proteins. Accordingly, the metabolic responses are considered to be more likely to prove of value in clinical monitoring of patients for severity of infection, or of reactivation of infection with M. tuberculosis, than immunological responses.

Acute-Phase Proteins↗
PubMed1989

Some simple statistical tests for exploring single-case time-series data.

Statistical analysis of single-case time-series data has received considerable attention. Many of the techniques discussed in the literature require long series of data or sophisticated statistical techniques. The present paper describes a number of 'quick and dirty' non-parametric tests which can be applied to relatively short time series. These tests require minimal calculations and can be carried out by inspecting graphical plots of the data. Each test is illustrated and tables for significance testing have been worked out. The importance of these tests lies in their potential to facilitate the accurate description of time series data. They are recommended as techniques for exploratory data analysis, the philosophy of which parallels Sidman's (1960) 'data led' approach to experimentation.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Receptors for neuropeptides are induced by exogenous poly(A)+ RNA in oocytes from Xenopus laevis.

Receptors for the hormones vasopressin, angiotensin II, and thyrotropin-releasing hormone have been studied electrophysiologically in Xenopus laevis oocytes previously injected with poly(A)+ RNA from the respective receptor-containing tissues. The injected oocytes responded to the hormones by demonstrating oscillations in membrane currents as recorded by the voltage-clamp method. The response was dependent on the hormone concentrations and detectable between 5 and 1000 nM concentrations. Size fractionation of poly(A)+ RNA from the respective tissues showed that the mRNAs encoding the three hormone receptors were larger than 18S rRNA, suggesting a length of at least 2 kilobases. When vasopressin was added to the oocyte bath, an inward membrane current was generated in oocytes injected with rat poly(A)+ RNA from liver but not from kidney. This suggests that the V1-type (liver), not the V2-type (kidney), vasopressin receptor can be expressed and electrophysiologically identified in the oocyte. A V1-specific, but not a V2-specific, antagonist suppressed the vasopressin-dependent effect. Application of angiotensin II to liver poly(A)+ RNA-injected oocytes elicited oscillations in membrane current, indicating that these oocytes also expressed receptors for angiotension II; the antagonist [Sar1, O-methionyl-Tyr4]angiotensin II blocked this effect. Poly(A)+ RNA from tumor-derived GH3B6 cells, known to contain receptors for thyrotropin-releasing hormone, injected into oocytes induced receptors responding to thyrotropin-releasing hormone; the drug chlordiazepoxide suppressed the thyrotropin-releasing hormone response.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed1987

Measurement of the dichotic listening ear advantage for intersubject and interstimulus comparisons.

Conventional dichotic listening techniques can unquestionably be used for nominal (left vs. right) categorization of ear or hemispheric differences. These techniques cannot, however, be used for ordinal comparisons of the size of ear advantages among different subjects or different tasks if the measure of the size of the lateral asymmetry is confounded with effects of varying overall performance, attentional bias, or choice of laterality index. A psychophysical procedure is described which is designed to avoid these confounds by measuring discrimination ability, in decibels, as the interaural intensity difference (IID) required for a specific accuracy. Results from two experiments with right-handed subjects showed an average right-ear advantage of about 3 db for phoneme discrimination and an average left-ear advantage of the same size for intonation discrimination.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

'Demand characteristics' in body-size estimation in anorexia nervosa.

We asked 24 patients with anorexia nervosa and 30 normal controls to estimate their body-size several times, each time using different instructions. The degree of over-estimation was found to vary predictably with the wording of the instructions. Informing the subject that she had made an error without specifying the direction of the error resulted in reduced over-estimation on a subsequent trial, for both anorexics and controls. 'Internally directed' instructions were associated with a greater degree of over-estimation than 'external' instructions in both groups, but particularly in anorexic subjects. Our results indicate the necessity of controlling the 'demand characteristics' of such experiments.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The neurohypophyseal hormones vasopressin and oxytocin. Precursor structure, synthesis and regulation.

Complete cDNA sequences for the vasopressin and oxytocin precursor polyproteins have been determined for the rat, calf, human and pig (vasopressin only), indicating the essential conservation of the precursor structures throughout mammals. DNA probes specific for vasopressin or oxytocin mRNAs have been used to identify both classic (hypothalamic) and novel (thymus, corpus luteum, phaeochromocytoma) sites of hormone expression. Semiquantitative DNA/RNA hybridization suggests that in rats expression of the vasopressin and oxytocin genes is positively effected by osmotic stress, negatively by a systemically applied excess of vasopressin; in the latter experiment a reduction in the hypothalamic levels of vasopressin and oxytocin mRNAs in normal and Brattleboro rats have been observed. This suggests a feedback regulation by the hormone as a possible element in controlling the transcription of the vasopressin gene.

Animals↗