Most acetylcholinesterase activity of non-nervous tissues and cells arises from the AChE-H transcript.

While the functional implications of AChE-T, PRiMA and ColQ have been firmly established, those of glypiated AChE remain uncertain. Insights into the physiological meaning of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-linked AChE-H were gained by comparing nervous and non-nervous tissues for the amount of AChE mRNA variants they contained. PCR showed that AChE-T mRNA prevailed in the mouse brain, spinal cord, sciatic nerve and muscle, and AChE-H mRNA in the bone marrow and thymus, as well as in the human gut.

Expression of cholinesterases in human kidney and its variation in renal cell carcinoma types.

Despite the aberrant expression of cholinesterases in tumours, the question of their possible contribution to tumorigenesis remains unsolved. The identification in kidney of a cholinergic system has paved the way to functional studies, but details on renal cholinesterases are still lacking. To fill the gap and to determine whether cholinesterases are abnormally expressed in renal tumours, paired pieces of normal kidney and renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) were compared for cholinesterase activity and mRNA levels.

The expression of cholinesterases in human renal tumours varies according to their histological types.

The change in the expression of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) activities in neoplastic colon and lung prompted us to study the possible effect of cancer on the expression of cholinesterases (ChEs) in kidney. Samples of papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC), conventional RCC (cRCC), chromophobe RCC (chRCC) and renal oncocytoma (RON), beside adjacent non-cancerous tissues, were analyzed. In pRCC both AChE and BuChE activities were statistically increased; in cRCC and chRCC only AChE activity increased and in RON neither AChE nor BuChE activities were affected.

Acetyl- and butyrylcholinesterase activities decrease in human colon adenocarcinoma.

Apart from the hydrolysis of acetylcholine (ACh), acetyl- (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), through noncatalytic mechanisms, intervene in hematopoiesis, morphogenesis, and neurogenesis (Layer and Willbold, 1995; Soreq and Seidman, 2001). Cholinesterase (ChE) molecules occur as globular (G1, G2, and G4) and asymmetric (A4, A8, and A12) forms (Legay, 2000; Massoulié, 2002). The G species might display amphiphilic (GA) or hydrophilic (GH) properties (Perrier et al.

Thymus acetylcholinesterase activity is reduced in mice with congenital muscular dystrophy.

Lama2dy mice constitute an animal model for congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) by merosin (laminin alpha2-chain) deficiency. This pathology affects the properties of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) of mouse skeletal muscle and nerves (Moral-Naranjo et al., 1999, 2002).