Fluorescent characterization of amyloid deposits in the kidneys of mdx mice.

Amyloidosis is a group of diseases that occurs when amyloid proteins are deposited in tissues and organs. The traditional way of identifying amyloid in tissue sections is staining with Congo red. However, this method has a number of limitations including background staining (background fluorescence), low fluorescence intensity and false-positive staining.

The Spatial Organization of the Intranuclear Structures of Human Brain Dopaminergic Neurons.

We studied the intranuclear localization of protein nucleophosmin (B23) and ubiquitin in the dopaminergic neurons of human substantia nigra (n = 6, age of 25-87 years) using immunohistochemistry and confocal laser microscopy. Intranuclear ubiquitin-immunopositive bodies that morphologically correspond to Marinesco bodies were found to be present in substantia nigra dopaminergic (tyrosine hydroxylase-immunopositive) neurons but absent in non-dopaminergic neurons. The number of bodies varied from 0 to 6 per cell nucleus.

[Immunohistochemical characteristics of the substantia nigra neurons of the human].

Aim: To determine the cytochemical characteristics of unchanged neurons of the human substantia nigra using a wide range of immunocytochemical markers some of which (glutamate decarboxylase-65, PGP 9.5, non-phosphorylated neurofilament proteins, alpa-tubulin) have never been used for study of human dopaminergic neurons.

Material And Methods: Fragments of human midbrain (17 men and women, aged from 28 to 78 years) from the archives of the Department of General and Specific Morphology of the Institute of Experimental Medicine were used.

[PROSPECTS OF THE NUCLEAR PROTEIN NeuN APPLICATION AS AN INDEX OF FUNCTIONAL STATE OF THE VERTEBRATE NERVE CELLS].

Assessment of safety, viability, and functional state of nerve cells is the major problem in studies of experimental effects on various structures of vertebrate brain and in search for correlation between structural abnormalities and changes in physiological parameters. Such an assessment is possible with applying an immunocytochemical reaction to neuronal nuclear antigen NeuN discovered in 1992. Numerous studies of the protein showed its neural specificity and its amino acid consequence was found to have high interspecies concervatism.

CHARACTERISTICS OF AMYLOID DEPOSITS DETECTED IN THE INTERNAL ORGANS OF mdx MICE.

The dystrophin-deficient mdx mouse is the most commonly used experimental model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Although the amyloid has been shown in the muscle biopsies of patients with different types of muscular dystrophies, there are no data on the amyloid accumulations in the biopsy of DMD patients or mdx mouse. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to testify the hypothesis of probable accumulation of amyloid in the visceral organs of mdx mouse.