Bioequivalence in dogs of a meloxicam formulation administered as a transmucosal oral mist with an orally administered pioneer suspension product.

A mucosal mist formulation of meloxicam, administered as a spray into the mouth (test article), was compared for bioequivalence to a pioneer meloxicam suspension for oral administration (reference article). Pharmacokinetic profiles and average bioequivalence were investigated in 20 dogs. The study design comprised a two-period, two-sequence, two-treatment cross-over design, with maximum concentration (C(max)) and area under plasma concentration-time curve to last sampling time (AUC(last)) used as pivotal bioequivalence variables.

Efficient trans-cleavage by the Schistosoma mansoni SMalpha1 hammerhead ribozyme in the extreme thermophile Thermus thermophilus.

The catalytic hammerhead structure has been found in association with repetitive DNA from several animals, including salamanders, crickets and schistosomes, and functions to process in cis the long multimer transcripts into monomer RNA in vivo. The cellular role of these repetitive elements and their transcripts is unknown. Moreover, none of these natural hammerheads have been shown to trans-cleave a host mRNA in vivo.

Cleavage of mitochondria-like transfer RNAs expressed in Escherichia coli.

Mitochondrial (mt) transfer RNAs (tRNAs) often harbor unusual structural features causing their secondary structure to differ from the conventional cloverleaf. tRNAs designed with such irregularities, termed mt-like tRNAs, are active in Escherichia coli as suppressors of reporter genes, although they display low steady-state levels. Characterization of fragments produced during mt-like tRNA processing in vitro and in vivo suggests that these RNAs are not fully processed at their 5' ends and are cleaved internally.

Identification and characterization of a Plasmodium falciparum RNA polymerase gene with similarity to mitochondrial RNA polymerases.

Nearly all mitochondrial RNA polymerase genes identified to date are encoded in the nucleus and have similarities to T3 and T7 bacteriophage RNA polymerases. Some chloroplast genes are also transcribed by T3/T7 phage-like RNA polymerases, raising the possibility that the apicomplexan parasites, which have both a mitochondrion and a plastid, might have two such genes. As part of an investigation of Plasmodium falciparum organelle transcription, we initiated a search for T3/T7 bacteriophage-like RNA polymerase genes.

Hammerhead-mediated processing of satellite pDo500 family transcripts from Dolichopoda cave crickets.

This work reports the discovery and functional characterization of catalytically active hammerhead motifs within satellite DNA of the pDo500 family from several DOLICHOPODA: cave cricket species. We show that in vitro transcribed RNA of some members of this satellite DNA family do self-cleave in vitro. This self-cleavage activity is correlated with the efficient in vivo processing of long primary transcripts into monomer-sized RNA.