A lack of thyroid hormones rather than excess thyrotropin causes abnormal skeletal development in hypothyroidism.

By proposing TSH as a key negative regulator of bone turnover, recent studies in TSH receptor (TSHR) null mice challenged the established view that skeletal responses to disruption of the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis result from altered thyroid hormone (T(3)) action in bone. Importantly, this hypothesis does not explain the increased risk of osteoporosis in Graves' disease patients, in which circulating TSHR-stimulating antibodies are pathognomonic. To determine the relative importance of T(3) and TSH in bone, we compared the skeletal phenotypes of two mouse models of congenital hypothyroidism in which the normal reciprocal relationship between thyroid hormones and TSH was intact or disrupted.

Thyroid hormone regulates heparan sulfate proteoglycan expression in the growth plate.

Thyroid hormone is essential for normal skeletal development. Hypothyroidism is associated with growth arrest, failure of chondrocyte differentiation, and abnormal matrix synthesis. Thyroid hormone modulates the Indian hedgehog/PTHrP feedback loop and regulates fibroblast growth factor (FGF)/FGF receptor signaling.

Cloning of Brassica napus CTP: phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase cDNAs by complementation in a yeast cct mutant.

CTP:phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase is a rate-limiting enzyme in biosynthesis of phosphatidylcholine in plant cells. We have isolated four cDNAs for the cytidylyltransferase from a root cDNA library of Brassica napus by complementation in a yeast cct mutant. The deduced amino-acid sequences of the B.

Characterisation of cDNA and genomic clones encoding homologues of the 65 kDa regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 2A in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Two cDNA species encoding sequences homologous to the 65 kDa regulatory subunit (PR 65) of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) have been isolated from an Arabidopsis thaliana cDNA library. These were designated pDF1 and pDF2. pDF1 is 1795 bp long and by comparison with the human and porcine PP2A regulatory subunit sequences represents a full-length clone.

Expression of mRNA and steady-state levels of protein isoforms of enoyl-ACP reductase from Brassica napus.

The expression of mRNA and the steady-state levels of two-component enzymes of plant fatty acid synthetase (FAS) were studied. Northern analysis of enoyl-ACP reductase (ER) and stearoyl-ACP desaturase (SD) gene expression showed that steady-state levels of both transcripts increase during lipid deposition in the seed reaching a maximum at 29 days after flowering (DAF). The steady-state level of ER message falls very quickly after reaching its maximum, whereas the SD message is longer-lived.