Primary and secondary cerebral lesions produced by kainic acid injections in the rat]

Systematic (i. p.) or intra-amygdaloid injections of kainic acid elicit typical generalised convulsive seizures with typical electrographic correlates. Depending on the survival time and the amount of neurotoxin administered, secondary pathological damage is invariably found in various brain structures removed from the injection site such as various hippocompal fields, midline thalamic nuclei and neocortical layers III and VI. Various lines of evidence are reported which suggest that the secondary pathological damage is not due to the spread of the neurotoxin but to the epileptic status it induces.     

Chromosome fragility and susceptibility of Bloom's syndrome fibroblasts to SV40 transformation

Summary A comparison of the frequencies of chromosomal aberrations and the rates of SV40 transformation was made using fibroblasts obtained from 2 patients with Bloom's syndrome (BS) and from a normal individual. BS cells were found to be more susceptible to chromosome damage, in confirmation of earlier reports, but surprisingly, BS cells were distinctly less prone to transformation.Supported in part by the Michael J. Connell Foundation Medical Genetics Fund, and Health, Education and Welfare, MCH project 422.     

Structure and expression of a human oxytocin receptor.

Just before the onset of labour, uterine myometrium becomes extremely sensitive to oxytocin, for which it is a primary target tissue, because of a dramatic increase in the number of oxytocin receptors. We report here the structure and expression of the human oxytocin receptor complementary DNA isolated by expression cloning. The encoded receptor is a 388-amino-acid polypeptide with 7 transmembrane domains typical of G protein-coupled receptors. The oxytocin receptor, expressed in Xenopus oocytes, specifically responds to oxytocin and induces an inward membrane current. Messenger RNAs for the receptor are of two sizes, 3.6 kilobases in breast, and 4.4 kilobases in ovary, uterine endometrium and myometrium. The mRNA level in the myometrium is very high at term. We conclude that the increase in receptor number in the myometrium at labour is, at least in part, due to the increase in mRNA.