Scopolamine administration modulates muscarinic, nicotinic and NMDA receptor systems.

Studies on the effect of scopolamine on memory are abundant but so far only regulation of the muscarinic receptor (M1) has been reported. We hypothesized that levels of other cholinergic brain receptors as the nicotinic receptors and the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, known to be involved in memory formation, would be modified by scopolamine administration.C57BL/6J mice were used for the experiments and divided into four groups.

Blocking mTORC1 activity by rapamycin leads to impairment of spatial memory retrieval but not acquisition in C57BL/6J mice.

Although the involvement of the mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) system in memory processes has been reported, information on the effect of rapamycin on spatial learning and memory is limited. It was therefore the aim of the study to show the effect of parenteral rapamycin administration to C57BL/6J mice on performance in the multiple T-maze (MTM) and to determine hippocampal mTOR activity. Rapamycin-treated and -untreated/trained/probed mice are the main part of the experiment considering retrieval and acquisition or consolidation of spatial memory.

Microscopic analysis of adenoviral decontamination using GFP adenovirus with comparable sensitivity to flow cytometry.

Expression of transgenes from adenovirus vectors has become an extremely important and widely used tool in experimental cancer research and many other areas in the life sciences. It needs to be kept in mind, however, that adenoviruses are human pathogens and avoiding exposure of laboratory personnel to infectious viral particles is therefore an important concern. This issue seems even more important when the transgenes expressed for experimental purposes include oncogenic sequences.

Activins and activin antagonists in hepatocellular carcinoma.

In many parts of the world hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is among the leading causes of cancer-related mortality but the underlying molecular pathology is still insufficiently understood. There is increasing evidence that activins, which are members of the transforming growth factor beta (TGFbeta) superfamily of growth and differentiation factors, could play important roles in liver carcinogenesis. Activins are disulphide-linked homo- or heterodimers formed from four different beta subunits termed betaA, betaB, betaC, and betaE, respectively.