Functional and structural characterization of anti-beta1-adrenoceptor autoantibodies of spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Eighteen month old spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR-rats) showed myocardial dysfunction and autoantibodies directed against the beta1-adrenoceptor similarly as known in human dilated cardiomyopathy or Chagas' disease. The agonist-like antibodies were able to activate the beta1-adrenoceptor mediated signal transduction cascade in cultured rat cardiomyocytes and induced a long-lasting stimulatory effect resulting in a harmful adrenergic overdrive. The antibodies recognized an epitope of the second extracellular loop of the beta1-adrenoceptor identical to that epitope identified in Chagas' disease.

Cardiac troponin I sense-antisense RNA duplexes in the myocardium.

Natural antisense RNA is now thought to regulate, at least in part, a growing number of eukaryotic genes. It is becoming increasingly apparent that such endogenous antisense RNA molecules may modulate gene expression in a manner analogous to synthetic oligomers. Here, we report the detection of antisense-orientated RNA transcripts of cardiac specific troponin I in rat and human myocardium.