Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is an inherited disorder of steroidogenesis with a wide spectrum of expression. In about 95% of cases, the disease is the result of 21-hydroxylase deficiency, an autosomal recessive condition that maps to the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) ...

Molecular cardiology is a new area of cardiovascular medicine that aims to apply molecular biological techniques for the mechanistic investigation, diag nosis, prevention, and treatment of cardiovascular disease. As an emerging discipline, it has changed our conceptual thinki ...

There are repeated ischemic events and nonischemic intervals in the heart affected by coronary artery disease. In the current study, we designed a hypoxia-inducible double plasmid system. By using a hypoxia response element, this system can be switched on by low oxygen but turned off by normal o ...

The potential of enhanced cardiovascular function via gene therapy has aroused extensive interest. Both viral and nonviral vectors have shown prom ise in the realm of cardiovascular gene therapy. Modification of vectors or addition of further transgenes to the expression cassette has ...

Osteoclasts are large multinucleate bone cells with the capacity to degrade bone by the process of bone resorption and, thus, participate in the homeostasis of bone and calcium in the body (1). Imaging of osteoclasts can be performed by a variety of microscopy methods including light microscop ...

The organic matrix of bone is a well-organized network of proteins. The main constituent is type I collagen. The noncollagenous proteins (NCPs) comprise about 10% of the total bone protein content. A variety of NCPs has been identified, including osteocalcin, osteopontin, osteonectin, bone ...

Immunohistochemistry can provide valuable information regarding protein expression in different cell types at specific stages of differentiation during bone modeling and remodeling. By combining immunohistochemistry with other techniques, it is possible for the resea ...

Gene expression in bone can be assessed by several techniques such as reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), differential display PCR, subtractive hybridization, and microchip arrays. The problem with all of these techniques is that they do not allow cellular loca ...

The history of culturing bone explants goes back to the early 1920s, when Robinson reported that the enzyme alkaline phosphatase played an important role in bone mineralization based on studies of chick bone fragments. Subsequently, Reynolds used bone explants to study collagen synthe ...

Mouse calvarial organ cultures have been used for many years to study the basic mechanisms by which osteoclastic bone resorption is regulated. The most obvious advantage of organ cultures over in vivo studies is the absence of confounding factors such as hormonal and mechanical influences. ...

Osteoclasts derive from macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF)-dependent hemopoietic precursors that develop into cells that express the αvβ3 subunit of the vitronectin receptor (VNR) and the calcitonin receptor (CTR). The extracellular degradative process, known ...

Osteoclasts are large multinucleated cells that are uniquely specialized for the function of lacunar bone resorption. For much of the previous century osteoclasts were thought to share a common progenitor cell with osteoblasts, bone-forming cells. Osteoclast formation occurri ...

Bone is a dynamic tissue that is continually remodeled throughout life. Such remodeling is carried out by the coordinated actions of two bone cell types: bone-resorbing osteoclasts (OCs) which are uniquely capable of dissolving and removing a small volume of bone, and bone-forming osteobl ...

Osteoclasts are large, multinucleated cells formed by the fusion of hematopoietic, mononuclear progenitors of the monocyte/macrophage lineage, and are the cells responsible for resorbing bone. Osteoclasts are usually few in number relative to other cell types in bone and are diffic ...

The murine coculture assay originally described by Takahashi et al. (1), was the first culture system developed that generated genuine, bone-resorbing osteoclasts. In this assay, osteoblasts are stimulated with 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (D3) to stimulate RANKL and macrophage colo ...

Osteoclasts, the multinucleated giant cells that resorb bone, originate from hemopoietic cells of the monocyte-macrophage lineage (1,2). We have developed a mouse bone marrow culture system, in which osteoclasts are formed in response to several bone-resorbing factors such as 1α,25- ...

Osteocytes are the most abundant cells in bone. Although individual osteocytes are buried in an isolated position within bone matrix, they remain in contact with one another and with cells on the bone surface by long cell processes that run via small channels, termed canaliculi, through the bone m ...

Bone formation does not lend itself easily to investigation because bone tissue consists of various cell types embedded in a complex extracellular matrix. These cells interact with each other and with the extracellular matrix, and when cell populations are removed from the network they ce ...

When conducting in vitro research on bone, a choice has to be made between using bone organ or bone cell cultures. When one decides to use the latter, the question is whether to use primary cells or cell lines. The advantage of using cell lines over freshly isolated cells lies in the ready availability of large n ...

Osteoblasts are the cells responsible for the formation of bone; they synthesize almost all of the constituents of the bone matrix and direct its subsequent mineralization. Once a phase of active bone formation is completed the osteoblasts do not become senescent but instead redifferent ...