Expression of the small heat shock protein alphaB-crystallin in term human placenta.

Problem: Expression of heat shock proteins has been described in different tissues relevant to human reproduction, including placenta. AlphaB-crystallin is a member of the small heat shock protein family (sHsp) exerting biologically important chaperon functions.

Method Of Study: Immunofluorescence; immunoblot analysis; quantitative real-time-PCR; CpG island methylation analysis.

Brain natriuretic peptide correlates with the extent of atrial fibrillation-associated silent brain lesions.

Objective: Identification of plasma markers indicative for atrial fibrillation-associated silent brain lesions.

Design And Methods: 1. Comparative determination of the plasma concentrations of secretagogin, S100B, neuropeptide Y, brain fatty acid binding protein, matrix metalloprotease 9, brain natriuretic peptide, and of D-Dimer in 222 patients with atrial fibrillation and 28 controls by immunoassays.

Differential expression of alphaB-crystallin and Hsp27-1 in anaplastic thyroid carcinomas because of tumor-specific alphaB-crystallin gene (CRYAB) silencing.

Expression of the small heat shock protein alphaB-crystallin in differentiated thyroid tumors has been described recently. In this study, we investigated the molecular mechanisms that affect the expression of alphaB-crystallin in benign goiters (n = 7) and highly malignant anaplastic thyroid carcinomas (ATCs) (n = 3). AlphaB-crystallin expression was compared with that of Hsp27-1.

A newly identified RET proto-oncogene polymorphism is found in a high number of endocrine tumor patients.

Multiple RET proto-oncogene transcripts, due to genomic variations and alternate splicing, have been described. To investigate endocrine tumor tissue characteristic RET proto-oncogene expression, we performed quantitative RT-PCR, Northern blot and Southern blot analyses of benign and malignant endocrine-derived tissues. We newly describe RET proto-oncogene expression in carcinoid-, gastrinoma- and insulinoma-derived tissue samples.

Setagin and secretagogin-R22: Posttranscriptional modification products of the secretagogin gene.

We describe two new variants of the recently identified hexa-EF-hand calcium binding protein secretagogin. The first variant (secretagogin-R22) is characterized by one single amino acid exchange (Q/R) at codon 22, most likely due to RNA editing. The second variant of secretagogin (setagin) consists of 49 amino acids.