Publications by authors named "Kurt Belisle"

Akt is a serine/threonine protein kinase that is activated by a variety of growth factors or cytokines in a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-dependent manner. By using a conditional transgenic system in which Akt signaling can be turned on or off in the adult heart, we previously showed that short-term Akt activation induces a physiological form of cardiac hypertrophy with enhanced coronary angiogenesis and maintained contractility. Here we tested the hypothesis that induction of physiological hypertrophy by short-term Akt activation might improve contractile function in failing hearts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cathepsins are required for the processing of antigens in order to make them suitable for loading on major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules, for subsequent presentation to CD4(+) T cells. It was shown that antigen processing in monocyte-derived dendritic cells (DC), a commonly used DC model, is different from that of primary human DC. Here, we report that the two subsets of human myeloid DC (mDC) and plasmacytoid DC (pDC) differ in their cathepsin distribution.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Akt is a pivotal signaling molecule involved in the regulation of angiogenesis. In order to further elucidate the role of Akt1 in blood vessel development, a tetracycline-regulated transgenic system was utilized to conditionally activate Akt1 signaling in endothelial cells to examine transcript expression changes associated with angiogenesis in the heart. Induction of Akt1 over the course of 6 weeks led to a 33% increase in capillary density without affecting overall heart growth.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We propose that rearrangements between short tandem repeated sequences occur by errors made during a replication fork repair pathway involving a replication template switch. We provide evidence here that the DnaK chaperone of E. coli controls this template switch repair process.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF