Publications by authors named "A Mutero"

Copper homeostasis is crucial for cellular physiology and development, and its dysregulation leads to disease. The Menkes ATPase ATP7A plays a key role in copper efflux, by trafficking from the Golgi to the plasma membrane upon cell exposure to elevated copper, but the mechanisms that target ATP7A to the cell periphery are poorly understood. PDZD11 interacts with the C-terminus of ATP7A, which contains sequences involved in ATP7A trafficking, but the role of PDZD11 in ATP7A localization is unknown.

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Boundaries (insulators) in the bithorax complex (BX-C) delimit autonomous regulatory domains that orchestrate the parasegment (PS)-specific expression of the BX-C homeotic genes. The boundary separates the and regulatory domains, which control Abd-B expression in PS11 and PS12, respectively. This boundary is composed of multiple functionally redundant elements and has two key functions: it blocks cross talk between and and facilitates boundary bypass.

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A >300 kb cis-regulatory region is required for the proper expression of the three bithorax complex (BX-C) homeotic genes. Based on genetic and transgenic analysis, a model has been proposed in which the numerous BX-C cis-regulatory elements are spatially restricted through the activation or repression of parasegment-specific chromatin domains. Particular early embryonic enhancers, called initiators, have been proposed to control this complex process.

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Chronic alcohol consumption produces a painful peripheral neuropathy for which there is no reliably successful therapy, attributable to, in great part, a lack of understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We tested the hypothesis that neuropathic pain associated with chronic alcohol consumption is a result of abnormal peripheral nociceptor function. In rats maintained on a diet to simulate chronic alcohol consumption in humans, mechanical hyperalgesia was present by the fourth week and maximal at 10 weeks.

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Splicing of alternative exon 6 to invariant exons 2, 3, and 4 in acetylcholinesterase (AChE) pre-mRNA results in expression of the prevailing enzyme species in the nervous system and at the neuromuscular junction of skeletal muscle. The structural determinants controlling splice selection are examined in differentiating C2-C12 muscle cells by selective intron deletion from and site-directed mutagenesis in the Ache gene. Transfection of a plasmid lacking two invariant introns (introns II and III) within the open reading frame of the Ache gene, located 5' of the alternative splice region, resulted in alternatively spliced mRNAs encoding enzyme forms not found endogenously in myotubes.

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