Age-related and sex-related alterations in f3-adrenergic receptors in different regions of rat brain

The binding of (-)[ 3H ]dihydroalprenolol , an antagonist of norepinephrine , to $-adrenergic receptors in different regions of the brain of male and female rats of various ages was measured . The binding to the synaptosomal fraction of corpus striatum , hypothalamus, cerebral cortex, cerebellum and the brainstems shows a significant decrease in the binding in old rats of both sexes . Only in the female corpus striatal region, the binding in the adult and the old is the same . In the case of females, the highest binding is seen in the young. In the male, an increase in binding occurs up to adulthood , after which it declines, suggesting a definite sex-related difference in the Q-adrenergic receptor.

Dopamine D1 and D2 Receptor Gene Expression and cGMP, IP3 and Ca2+ Regulation in the Brain Regions of Hypoxic Neonatal Rats: Role of Glucose, Oxygen and Epinephrine Supplementation

Department of Biotechnology, Cochin University of Science and Technology

GABA, serotonin, muscarinic receptors - their second messengers and transcription factors functional regulation in the brain regions of hypoxic neonatal rats: Resuscitation with glucose, oxygen and epinephrine

The present study was designed to investigate the protective effect of glucose, oxygen and epinephrine resuscitation on impairment in the functional role of GABAergic, serotonergic, muscarinic receptors, PLC, BAX, SOD, CAT and GPx expression in the brain regions of hypoxia induced neonatal rats. Also, the role of hormones - Triiodothyronine (T3) and insulin, second messengers – cAMP, cGMP and IP3 and transcription factors – HIF and CREB in the regulation of neonatal hypoxia and its resuscitation methods were studied. Behavioural studies were conducted to evaluate the motor function and cognitive deficit in one month old control and experimental rats. The efficient and timely supplementation of glucose plays a crucial role in correcting the molecular changes due to hypoxia, oxygen and epinephrine. The sequence of glucose, epinephrine and oxygen administration at the molecular level is an important aspect of the study. The additive neuronal damage effect due to oxygen and epinephrine treatment is another important observation. The corrective measures by initial supply of glucose to hypoxic neonatal rats showed from the molecular study when brought to practice will lead to healthy intellectual capacity during the later developmental stages, which has immense clinical significance in neonatal care.

GABAA and GABAB Receptor Gene Expression and Functional Regulation During Pancreatic Regeneration and Insulin Secretion in Rats

The present study demonstrate the functional alterations of the GABAA and GABAB receptors and the gene expression during the regeneration of pancreas following partial pancreatectomy. The role of these receptors in insulin secretion and pancreatic DNA synthesis using the specific agonists and antagonists also are studied in vitro. The alterations of GABAA and GABAR receptor function and gene expression in the brain stem, crebellum and hypothalamus play an important role in the sympathetic regulation of insulin secretion during pancreatic regeneration. Previous studies have given much information linking functional interaction between GABA and the peripheral nervous system. The involvement of specific receptor subtypes functional regulation during pancreatic regeneration has not given emphasis and research in this area seems to be scarce. We have observed a decreased GABA content, down regulation of GABAA receptors and an up regulation of GABAB receptors in the cerebral cortex, brain stem and hypothalamus. Real Time-PCR analysis confirmed the receptor data in the brain regions. These alterations in the GABAA and GABAB receptors of the brain are suggested to govern the regenerative response and growth regulation of the pancreas through sympathetic innervation. In addition, receptor binding studies and Real Time-PCR analysis revealed that during pancreatic regeneration GABAA receptors were down regulated and GABAB receptors were up regulated in pancreatic islets. This suggests an inhibitory role for GABAA receptors in islet cell proliferation i.e., the down regulation of this receptor facilitates proliferation. Insulin secretion study during 1 hour showed GABA has inhibited the insulin secretion in a dose dependent manner in normal and hyperglycaemic conditions. Bicuculline did not antagonize this effect. GABAA agonist, muscimol inhibited glucose stimulated insulin secretion from pancreatic islets except in the lowest concentration of 1O-9M in presence of 4mM glucose.Musclmol enhanced insulin secretion at 10-7 and 10-4M muscimol in presence of 20mM glucose- 4mM glucose represents normal and 20mM represent hyperglycaemic conditions. GABAB agonist, baclofen also inhibited glucose induced insulin secretion and enhanced at the concentration of 1O-5M at 4mM glucose and at 10-9M baclofen in presence of 20mM glucose. This shows a differential control of the GABAA and GABAB receptors over insulin release from the pancreatic islets. During 24 hours in vitro insulin secretion study it showed that low concentration of GABA has inhibited glucose stimulated insulin secretion from pancreatic islets. Muscimol, the GABAA agonist, inhibited the insulin secretion but, gave an enhanced secretion of insulin in presence of 4mM glucose at 10-7 , 10-5 and 1O-4M muscimol. But in presence of 20mM glucose muscimol significantly inhibited the insulin secretion. GABAB agonist, baclofen also inhibited glucose induced insulin secretion in presence of both 4mM and 20mM glucose. This shows the inhibitory role of GABA and its specific receptor subtypes over insulin synthesis from pancreatic bete-islets. In vitro DNA synthesis studies showed that activation of GABAA receptor by adding muscimol, a specific agonist, inhibited islet DNA synthesis. Also, the addition of baclofen, a specific agonist of GABAB receptor resulted in the stimulation of DNA synthesis.Thus the brain and pancreatic GABAA and GABAB receptor gene expression differentially regulates pancreatic insulin secretion and islet cell proliferation during pancreatic regeneration. This will have immense clinical significance in therapeutic applications in the management of Diabetes mellitus.

Muscarinic M1, M3, Nicotinic,GABAA and GABAB Receptor Subtypes Gene Expression in Insulin Induced Hypoglycemic Rat Brain Regions: Functional Regulation through Phospholipase C and CREB Protein

In the present study, a detailed investigation on the alterations of muscarinic M1, M3, α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAchR), GABA receptors and its subtypes; GABAAα1 and GABAB in the brain regions of streptozotocin induced diabetic and insulin induced hypoglycemic rats were carried out. Gene expression of acetylcholine esterase (AChE), choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), GAD, GLUT3, Insulin receptor, superoxide dismutase (SOD), Bax protein, Phospholipase C and CREB in hypoglycemic and hyperglycemic rat brain were studied. Muscarinic M1, M3 receptors, AChE, ChAT, GABAAα1, GABAB, GAD, Insulin receptor, SOD, Bax protein and Phospholipase C expression in pancreas was also carried out. The molecular studies on the CNS and PNS damage will elucidate the therapeutic role in the corrective measures of the damage to the brain during hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia.

Overtone spectra of styrene and polystyrene in the visible and near infrared regions

Vibrational overtone spectra of styrene (liquid) and polystyrene (solid), studied by the laser-induced thermal lens (for ΔV=6) and the conventional near infrared absorption (for ΔV=3–5) techniques, are reported. For polystyrene, the overtone energy-bond length correlation predicts that the aryl CH bonds are ∼0.0005 Å longer than that in benzene, while no such conclusions could be drawn on styrene. Thesp 3 CH overtones in polystyrene are observed on the low energy side of the aryl CH overtones.

A Study on Aerosol Transport Dynamics over the Indian Landmass and the Adjoining Oceanic Regions Using Satellite Data

The present study brings out the influence of transport dynamics on the aerosol distribution over the Indian region at a few selected geographically distinct locations. Over the Bay of Bengal the dominant pathway of aerosol transport during the pre-monsoon period is through higher altitudes (~ 3 km); directed from the Indian main land. In contrast, the aerosol pathways over the Arabian Sea during the same period are quite complex. They are directed from geographically different environments around the ocean through different altitudes. However in general, the day-to-day variability of AOD at both these regions is significantly influenced by the features of atmospheric circulation especially, the wind convergence at higher altitudes (around 3 km). Over the Ganga Basin during the winter period, the wind convergence at lower altitudes (< I km) govems the shon term variations in AOD, while the mean AOD distribution at this location is mainly governed by the local anthropogenic sources.

Dopamine D2 and 5-HT2A receptor gene expression

Neuronal dopamine and serotonin receptors are widely distributed in the central and the peripheral nervous systems at different levels. Dopaminergic and serotonergic systems have crucial role in aldehyde dehydrogenase regulation Stimulation of autonomic nervous system during ethanol treatment is suggested to be an important factor in regulating the ALDH function. The ALDH enzyme activity was increased in plasma, cerebral cortex, and liver but decreased in cerebellum. The ALDH enzyme affinity was decreased in plasma, brainstem and liver and increased in cerebral cortex and cerebellum. Dopamine and serotonin content decreased in liver and brain regions - cerebral cortex, corpus striatum of ethanol treated rats with an increased HVA/DA, 5-HIAA/5-HT tumover rate. Dopamine content decreased in brainstem with an increased HVA/DA turnover rate and serotonin content decreased with an increased 5-HIAA/5-HT turnover rate in the brainstem of ethanol treated rats compared to control. Serotonin content increased in hypothalamus with a decreased 5-HIAA/5—HT turnover rate where as dopamine content decreased in hypothalamus with an increased HVA/DA tumover rate of ethanol treated rats compared to control.alterations of DA D2 and 5-HTQA receptor function and gene expression in the cerebellum, hypothalamus, corpus striatum, cerebral cortex play an important role in the sympathetic regulation of ALDH enzyme in ethanol addiction. There is a serotonergic and dopaminergic functional regulation of ALDH activity in the brain regions and liver of ethanol treated rats. Gene expression studies of DA D2 and 5'HT2A studies confirm these observations. Perfusion studies using DA, 5-HT and glucose showed ALDH regulatory function. Brain activity measeurement using EEG showed a prominentfrontal brain wave difference. This will have immense clinical significance in the management of ethanol addiction.

Studies on the benthose of the mud bank regions of the Kerala coast

There is very little information on the subtidal bottom fauna of the shelf regions in the seas around India. What little is known is restricted to macro benthos. The paucity of the work on bottom fauna and the importance of mud banks in the fishery of the South West Coast of India has initiated the present study. Attempts have been made to obtain a picture of the bottom fauna of a mud bank region of the Kerala Coast. The difficulties involved in the sampling and analysis, especially the availability of a suitable vessel during the S.W. Monsoon, resulted in the work being restricted mainly to the Narakal mud bank region 6 Km. north of Cochin Detailed sampling is conducted using grab, dredge and to a small extent beam trawl, to assess the qualitative and quantitative nature of the macro benthos. Important species contributing to the fauna are identified and the standing crop estimated for different seasons. The meiobenthos was studied using core samples taken from the grab. Animals were identified to the major taxa. Standing crop of meiobenthos and the quantitative importance of different groups were also studied. The data collected have been interpreted and discussed. As an understanding of the physico-chemical aspects of the environment is essential in order to obtain a true picture of the benthos, attempts were made in this direction. Environmental parameters such as temperature of the sediment, salinity, temperature, and dissolved oxygen in the overlying water were studied .during the period of benthos investigation. Monthly observations on the dissolved inorganic and organic phosphorus in the area of investigation have been made. The physico-chemical nature of the sediment was also studied. Influence of these ecological variables on the bottom fauna is discussed.

Content Based Image Retrieval Using Low Level Features of Automatically Extracted Regions of Interest

This paper proposes a region based image retrieval system using the local colour and texture features of image sub regions. The regions of interest (ROI) are roughly identified by segmenting the image into fixed partitions, finding the edge map and applying morphological dilation. The colour and texture features of the ROIs are computed from the histograms of the quantized HSV colour space and Gray Level co- occurrence matrix (GLCM) respectively. Each ROI of the query image is compared with same number of ROIs of the target image that are arranged in the descending order of white pixel density in the regions, using Euclidean distance measure for similarity computation. Preliminary experimental results show that the proposed method provides better retrieving result than retrieval using some of the existing methods.

Area and Volume Calculation of Necrotic Tissue regions of heart using Interpolation

This paper attempts to develop an improved tool, which would read two dimensional(2D) cardiac MRI images and compute areas and volume of the scar tissue. Here the computation would be done on the cardiac MR images to quantify the extent of damage inflicted by myocardial infarction on the cardiac muscle (myocardium) using Interpolation