Cystic Fibrosis Transport Regulator and its mRNA are Expressed in Human Epidermis

Cystic fibrosis transport regulator is a cAMP-dependent chloride channel protein. Normal (non cystic fibrosis) human epidermis stained positive for cystic fibrosis transport regulator as densely as did the eccrine sweat gland when three monoclonal antibodies for R (regulatory) and C (C-terminus) domains of cystic fibrosis transport regulator were used. All the layers of the epidermis took up staining uniformly. A peptide for C-epitope completely blocked the staining with monoclonal antibodies for C. Nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction of freshly isolated human epidermal fragments and the eccrine sweat glands amplified the cystic fibrosis transport regulator mRNA sequence derived from exons 13 and 14 to comparable extents. The 526 base pair antisense, but not sense, RNA probe derived from exons 10-13 stained cystic fibrosis transport regulator mRNA in both the epidermis and the sweat gland to a similar extent. In the epidermis, the cytoplasm of basal cells, stratum spinosum cells, and granular layer cells were all stained uniformly, but not corneocytes in the stratum corneum. In the sweat secretory coils, both clear and dark cells were stained but not the myoepithelium, with the dark cells staining more densely than the clear cells as in a previous study. In the duct, both luminal and basal ductal cells took up cystic fibrosis transport regulator staining uniformly but luminal cytoplasm of luminal ductal cells was devoid of cystic fibrosis transport regulator mRNA. Although the function of cystic fibrosis transport regulator in the epidermis is totally unknown, its recently proposed role as a universal regulator of a variety of cellular and membrane functions necessitates further studies on its regulation and function in health and disease

Cystic Fibrosis Transport Regulator and its mRNA are Expressed in Human Epidermis

Cystic fibrosis transport regulator is a cAMP-dependent chloride channel protein. Normal (non cystic fibrosis) human epidermis stained positive for cystic fibrosis transport regulator as densely as did the eccrine sweat gland when three monoclonal antibodies for R (regulatory) and C (C-terminus) domains of cystic fibrosis transport regulator were used. All the layers of the epidermis took up staining uniformly. A peptide for C-epitope completely blocked the staining with monoclonal antibodies for C. Nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction of freshly isolated human epidermal fragments and the eccrine sweat glands amplified the cystic fibrosis transport regulator mRNA sequence derived from exons 13 and 14 to comparable extents. The 526 base pair antisense, but not sense, RNA probe derived from exons 10-13 stained cystic fibrosis transport regulator mRNA in both the epidermis and the sweat gland to a similar extent. In the epidermis, the cytoplasm of basal cells, stratum spinosum cells, and granular layer cells were all stained uniformly, but not corneocytes in the stratum corneum. In the sweat secretory coils, both clear and dark cells were stained but not the myoepithelium, with the dark cells staining more densely than the clear cells as in a previous study. In the duct, both luminal and basal ductal cells took up cystic fibrosis transport regulator staining uniformly but luminal cytoplasm of luminal ductal cells was devoid of cystic fibrosis transport regulator mRNA. Although the function of cystic fibrosis transport regulator in the epidermis is totally unknown, its recently proposed role as a universal regulator of a variety of cellular and membrane functions necessitates further studies on its regulation and function in health and disease

Where Brain, Body and World Collide

The production cross section of electrons from semileptonic decays of beauty hadrons was measured at mid-rapidity (|y| < 0.8) in the transverse momentum range 1 < pt < 8 Gev/c with the ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC in pp collisions at a center of mass energy sqrt{s} = 7 TeV using an integrated luminosity of 2.2 nb^{-1}. Electrons from beauty hadron decays were selected based on the displacement of the decay vertex from the collision vertex. A perturbative QCD calculation agrees with the measurement within uncertainties. The data were extrapolated to the full phase space to determine the total cross section for the production of beauty quark-antiquark pairs

Charge correlations using the balance function in Pb?Pb collisions at ?sNN = 2.76 TeV

In high-energy heavy-ion collisions, the correlations between the emitted particles can be used as a probe to gain insight into the charge creation mechanisms. In this article, we report the first results of such studies using the electric charge balance function in the relative pseudorapidity \Delta\eta and azimuthal angle \Delta\phi in Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The width of the balance function decreases with growing centrality (i.e. for more central collisions) in both projections. This centrality dependence is not reproduced by HIJING, while AMPT, a model which incorporates strings and parton rescattering, exhibits qualitative agreement with the measured correlations in \Delta\phi but fails to describe the correlations in \Delta\eta. A thermal blast wave model incorporating local charge conservation and tuned to describe the p_T spectra and v_2 measurements reported by ALICE, is used to fit the centrality dependence of the width of the balance function and to extract the average separation of balancing charges at freeze-out. The comparison of our results with measurements at lower energies reveals an ordering with sqrt{s_{NN}}: the balance functions become narrower with increasing energy for all centralities. This is consistent with the effect of larger radial flow at the LHC energies but also with the late stage creation scenario of balancing charges. However, the relative decrease of the balance function widths in \Delta\eta and \Delta\phi with centrality from the highest SPS to the LHC energy exhibits only small differences. This observation cannot be interpreted solely within the framework where the majority of the charge is produced at a later stage in the evolution of the heavy-ion collision