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Biomedical subjects

C A Peterson

Publications and source records attributed to C A Peterson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Structure and lens expression of the gene encoding chicken beta A3/A1-crystallin.

The beta A1- and beta A3-crystallins are major polypeptides in the lenses of vertebrates. We present evidence that a single beta A3/A1 gene encodes these two proteins in the chicken. The beta A3/A1 gene has been sequenced and its functional promoter identified in transfection experiments. The chicken beta A3/A1 gene has the same structure as the human orthologue: six exons with standard splice sites and two alternative start codons from which the protein products are apparently translated. Northern analysis revealed an abundant 0.9-kb transcript in the lenses of 1-2-day-old chickens and no detectable transcripts in the rest of the eye, brain, heart, kidney, liver or skeletal muscle. The 5'-flanking sequence of the chicken beta A3/A1 gene is very similar to that of the human and mouse genes, suggesting conservation of important putative regulatory sequences in addition to the TATA box. A thymidine-rich element (bp -218 to -163) and a potential AP-1-binding site (bp -264 to -258) are present within the chicken 5'-flanking region. A DNA fragment from -382 to +22 of the chicken beta A3/A1 gene is sufficient to promote expression of the bacterial cat gene in transfected chicken primary lens epithelial cells, but not in transfected dermal fibroblasts.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1992

Beta-enolase is a marker of human myoblast heterogeneity prior to differentiation.

In this report, we define a muscle-specific marker, beta-enolase, that distinguishes proliferating myoblasts from different stages of development. Enolase exists as multiple isoforms and in the course of cardiac and skeletal muscle development the beta isoform progressively replaces the alpha isoform. In skeletal muscle, this change in gene expression, unlike most developmental changes in myogenic gene expression, is evident in undifferentiated myoblasts. Whereas myoblasts from fetal tissues express alpha-enolase mRNA, beta-enolase is the predominant mRNA expressed by myoblasts from postnatal tissues. Our results are consistent with the idea that distinct precursor myoblasts contribute to the diversity of fiber types characteristic of muscle tissue at different stages of development.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Bone composition and histology of young growing rats fed diets of varied calcium bioavailability: spinach, nonfat dry milk, or calcium carbonate added to casein.

Bone composition and histology were evaluated in young growing rats fed nutritionally complete but calcium-restricted (0.15%) diets in which calcium was derived from spinach, nonfat dry milk (NFDM), or CaCO3 added to casein. Groups of male weanling rats were pair-fed for 28 d. A 0.5% calcium casein-based diet group fed ad libitum was included to provide a comparison of normal bone structure and composition. Bone growth and bone ash were depressed in spinach-fed rats. Total bone tibia calcium in 0.5% calcium casein-based, 0.15% calcium casein-based, NFDM and spinach diet groups were 64.0, 29.2, 30.7 and 13.8 mg, respectively. All other measured bone mineral levels were also lower, except for potassium. Femur hydroxyproline concentrations were 1.2, 1.6, 1.6 and 2.1% in 0.5% calcium casein-based, 0.15% calcium caseinbased, NFDM and spinach diet groups, respectively. Bone histomorphometry indicated gross underdevelopment and compromised mineralization of trabecular bone of spinach-fed rats. For the first time, it has been demonstrated with histologic techniques that calcium from the low bioavailable source, spinach, compromises both the quantity and quality of bone. In contrast, when calcium is fed to growing animals at levels below the National Research Council requirement but from a highly bioavailable source (i.e., NFDM and CaCO3), there is only a reduction in bone quantity.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

A psychotic gynemimetic: I just had a pregnant thought.

Nomothetic and idiographic content analytic approaches to the Rorschach are used in complementary fashion to explore the psychotic personality structure and primitive interpersonal models in a 37-year-old biologically normal male, who was a gynemimetic, that is, a transvestite who aspired to have the genetalia of a woman. The Rorschach was riddled with psychotic verbalizations and imagery suggesting inadequate differentiation from the original symbiosis, inadequate symbiosis anxiety, and significant separation anxiety--a constellation culminating in the transsexual fantasy of fusion with the mother.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Aloneness and the Isakower phenomenon.

Under the sway of the oedipal imperative, the Isakower phenomenon has long been regarded as a regressive perceptual defense against castration anxiety accompanying incestuous wishes, often stimulated by primal scene exposure-fantasy. Clinical material from the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a borderline patient with object constancy deficits is offered to support a reconceptualization of the Isakower phenomenon: Following annihilatory rage and the destruction of extant inner objects, resulting in a regression to the "drive organization of memory," the face-breast imagery within the Isakower phenomenon arrives as a hallucinatory alternative to unbearable aloneness.

Anxiety, Separation↗
PubMed1991

A rapid method for macerating phloem.

Sieve cells and sieve tube members can be macerated from the phloem of various organs of woody and herbaceous species by autoclaving the tissue in a mild macerating medium. This treatment does not digest the primary walls or the callose deposits on the sieve areas and sieve plates of the sieve elements. These cells can then be recognized by the fluorescence of their callose after staining with aniline blue. Sometimes adjacent sieve elements fail to separate and one can observe details of their junctures.

Cytological Techniques↗
PubMed1991

Efficient lipid staining in plant material with sudan red 7B or fluorol [correction of fluoral] yellow 088 in polyethylene glycol-glycerol.

Polyethylene glycol (400) with 90% glycerol (aqueous) is introduced as an efficient solvent system for lipid stains. Various lipid-soluble dyes were dissolved in this solvent system and tested for their intensity, contrast, and specificity of staining of suberin lamellae in plant tissue. The stability (i.e., lack of precipitation) of the various staining solutions in the presence of fresh tissue was also tested. When dissolved in polyethylene glycol-glycerol, Sudan red 7B (fat red) was the best nonfluorescent stain and fluorol yellow 088 (solvent green 4) was an excellent fluorochrome. These two dyes formed stable staining solutions which efficiently stained lipids in fresh sections without forming precipitates. Estimations of the solubilities of these dyes in the solvent compared with their solubilities in lipids of various chemical types indicated that they should both be effective stains for lipids in general.

Azo Compounds↗
PubMed1991

Effect of a change in house staff work schedule on resource utilization and patient care.

Concern is frequently expressed by health care providers and consumers that the work environment of physicians-in-training may adversely affect their performance. This article documents the effects of changing from a traditional rotational overnight call schedule for house staff to a schedule designed to reduce sleep deprivation, distribute admissions more evenly throughout the week, and improve continuity of inpatient care on the internal medicine service of a large, university-affiliated Veterans Affairs Medical Center. In a prospective, time-series study, the hypothesis that this change would improve the efficiency and quality of medical care was evaluated by comparing the hospital course of the patients admitted during 4-week periods prior to and following the change in work schedule. The patients in the preintervention group do not differ significantly from those in the postintervention group in any identifiable clinical characteristics. The length of stay was shorter (10.9 vs 9.3 days) and the number of laboratory tests ordered per patient was smaller (24.0 vs 19.0) for patients cared for under the new work schedule compared with those cared for under the traditional work schedule. Resident physicians also committed fewer medication errors under the new work schedule (16.9 vs 12.0 per 100 patients discharged). We conclude that altering the house staff work schedule affects patient care and can lead to a decrease in utilization of health care resources.

Continuity of Patient Care↗
PubMed1990

Negative control of the helix-loop-helix family of myogenic regulators in the NFB mutant.

We have characterized a nondifferentiating mouse muscle cell line, NFB, that represses the activity of the helix-loop-helix (HLH) family of myogenic regulators, yet expresses sarcomeric actins. The NFB MyoD gene is silent, but can be activated upon transfection of a long terminal region-controlled chicken MyoD cDNA, resulting in myogenesis. When NFB cells are fused with H9c2 rat muscle cells in heterokaryons, the level of rat MyoD transcripts declines. Thus, the stoichiometry of MyoD and the putative repressor controls myogenesis. Although NFB cells express myogenin and Myf-5 transcripts, the activity of these regulators is also repressed:myogenesis is not induced in 10T1/2 fibroblasts and is repressed in L6 muscle cells upon fusion with NFB cells. We conclude that the myogenic HLH regulators are not required for sarcomeric actin gene activation and that myogenesis is subject to dominant-negative control.

Actins↗
PubMed1990

Removal of 2',3'-dideoxynucleotide residues from injected DNA in Xenopus laevis oocytes.

Dideoxynucleotides have proved to be potent differential inhibitors of DNA polymerases in vitro and in vivo. Used extensively in studies of DNA repair and replication, they have more recently been used as antiviral agents particularly in treating patients for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Once incorporated, these sugar-modified analogues prevent the further extension of the polynucleotide chain because of the absence of a 3'-hydroxyl group. We demonstrated that, upon injection into Xenopus laevis oocytes, 2',3'-dideoxynucleotides are efficiently removed from plasmid DNA preterminated with these analogues allowing subsequent closure by ligation. The removal process is not sensitive to aphidicolin but is quantitatively inhibited by novobiocin.

Animals↗
PubMed1990

Perceptual robustness of the nonrelationship between psychopathology and popular responses on the Hand Test and the Rorschach.

A Hand Test Popular response is developed using 106 normal subjects and Rorschach's traditional "one-in-three" criterion. Six popular responses were derived. Neither the newly established Hand Test Popular response nor the Rorschach Popular discriminated psychosis from nonpsychosis, but as expected, Rorschach chi + % and Rorschach WSum6 were significant, and the Hand Test Bizarre (BIZ) score approached significance. Both the Rorschach Popular and the newly developed Hand Test Popular await further elucidation.

Humans↗
PubMed1990

Racial bias and the MCMI.

We studied the scores obtained on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) by Black and White male psychiatric inpatients to determine the presence or absence of racial bias. In predicting psychopathology for the two races, comparisons of MCMI performance indicated significant differences for all diagnoses except the personality disorders. The subjects were then matched into two groups of 209 patients each, according to DSM-III psychiatric diagnoses. The data were analyzed at the item, scale, and structural levels. At the item level, application of the Mantel-Haenszel Procedure revealed that 45 of the 175 items of the inventory were answered significantly different by the two racial groups. Because this number was higher than what could be expected by chance, the finding suggested possible deficiencies in terms of the culture-fairness of the items used in the test. At the scale level, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that the scores obtained by the Black and White groups were significantly different in 9 of the 20 scales (Histrionic, Narcissistic, Antisocial, Paraphrenia, Hypomania, Dysthymia, Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, and Psychotic Delusion). With the exception of the Dysthymic scale, all of the differences were in the direction of the Blacks obtaining a higher score than the Whites. At the structural level, however, a principal components factor analysis performed on each group resulted in factor structures that looked identical.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

High resolution KSCN/CsSCN equilibrium gradients effectively separate a population of density labeled proteins from unlabeled proteins.

The persistence of proteins in a number of biological systems has been analyzed by density labeling techniques; however, the utility of this approach has been severely hampered by poor resolution between density-labeled and unlabeled proteins on equilibrium gradients. A high resolution equilibrium salt gradient composed of KSCN/CsSCN has been developed to effectively separate density-labeled proteins (13C-15N-2H-substituted) from unlabeled proteins. The resolution of this system is approximately twofold greater than that previously achieved with cesium formate/guanidine hydrochloride equilibrium gradients which have been used in many recent protein density labeling studies. In order to examine the extent of cross-contamination between density-labeled and unlabeled proteins in a KSCN/CsSCN gradient system, density-labeled chick epidermal proteins were mixed with unlabeled Drosophila larval proteins and then separated on these equilibrium gradients. From individual gradient fractions proteins were recovered and fractionated on a sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel, demonstrating the virtually complete separation between the two populations. The general utility of this system for protein stability studies is also demonstrated.

Animals↗
PubMed1989

Region-specific deposition of dermal proteins between dermis and epidermis during induction of chick feather and scale rudiments.

To begin to study the role of particular proteins in inductive tissue interactions, we have used density labelling techniques to determine whether any dermal proteins are found between embryonic chick dermis and epidermis at a stage when the dermis plays an important inductive role in epidermal differentiation. Epidermis will form feathers or scales depending on whether it interacts with dorsal or foot dermis, respectively, and the dermis can still influence epidermal differentiation when direct cell contact between the tissues is blocked by a membrane filter during culturing (Peterson & Grainger, 1985). In transfilter experiments, we detect a subset of dermal proteins within the filter between the tissues. Several of these dermal proteins are deposited in a region-specific manner, that is, they are only found associated with filters from either dorsal or foot dermis. We have previously shown that the expression of some of these proteins is specific to particular regions of dermis and is also associated with the inductive potential of the dermis (Peterson & Grainger, 1986). We detect only 17 dermal proteins which are transferred across the filter in these cultures and found in direct association with epidermis; of these 14 are common to both dorsal and foot dermis, and 3 are deposited in a region-specific manner. Our results lead us to hypothesize a significant function for certain dermal proteins in this inductive interaction either as part of the extracellular matrix or in direct association with epidermis.

Animals↗
PubMed1988

Evidence for positive and negative regulation in the promoter of the chicken delta 1-crystallin gene.

We investigated the role of sequences flanking the transcription initiation site of the delta 1-crystallin gene in transient transfection assays of primary embryonic chicken lens epithelial cells or fibroblasts. Varying lengths of the 5' flanking sequence of the delta 1-crystallin gene (containing some untranslated sequence from exon 1) were fused to the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene in the pSVOCAT plasmid. A plasmid carrying the bacterial beta-galactosidase gene driven by the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) promoter was used as an internal control. Standardized results showed that the sequence located between -120 to -43 exhibited strong promoter activity; however, the promoter activity was markedly reduced (20-fold) when the upstream sequence between -603 and -120 was included in the construct. The delta 1-crystallin promoter displayed little lens preference. This upstream sequence did not reduce the activity of the Simian virus 40 (SV40) early promoter (with or without its enhancer) or the Herpes thymidine kinase promoter in transfection tests, indicating some specificity in its effect. Evidence for a delta 1-crystallin negative trans-acting factor was provided by competition experiments. Our data raise the possibility that expression of the delta 1-crystallin gene involves a negative cis-acting transcription element, a speculation which may deserve further attention in view of the gradual decrease in delta-crystallin synthesis in the developing lens.

Acetyltransferases↗