Adenine, guanine and pyridine nucleotides in blood during physical exercise and restitution in healthy subjects

Maximal physical exertion is accompanied by increased degradation of purine nucleotides in muscles with the products of purine catabolism accumulating in the plasma. Thanks to membrane transporters, these products remain in an equilibrium between the plasma and red blood cells where they may serve as substrates in salvage reactions, contributing to an increase in the concentrations of purine nucleotides. In this study, we measured the concentrations of adenine nucleotides (ATP, ADP, AMP), inosine nucleotides (IMP), guanine nucleotides (GTP, GDP, GMP), and also pyridine nucleotides (NAD, NADP) in red blood cells immediately after standardized physical effort with increasing intensity, and at the 30th min of rest. We also examined the effect of muscular exercise on adenylate (guanylate) energy charge—AEC (GEC), and on the concentration of nucleosides (guanosine, inosine, adenosine) and hypoxanthine. We have shown in this study that a standardized physical exercise with increasing intensity leads to an increase in IMP concentration in red blood cells immediately after the exercise, which with a significant increase in Hyp concentration in the blood suggests that Hyp was included in the IMP pool. Restitution is accompanied by an increase in the ATP/ADP and ADP/AMP ratios, which indicates an increase in the phosphorylation of AMP and ADP to ATP. Physical effort applied in this study did not lead to changes in the concentrations of guanine and pyridine nucleotides in red blood cells

Effects of ac-field amplitude on the dielectric susceptibility of relaxors

The thermally activated flips of the local spontaneous polarization in relaxors were simulated to investigate the effects of the applied-ac-field amplitude on the dielectric susceptibility. It was observed that the susceptibility increases with increasing the amplitude at low temperatures. At high temperatures, the susceptibility experiences a plateau and then drops. The maximum in the temperature dependence of susceptibility shifts to lower temperatures when the amplitude increases. A similarity was found between the effects of the amplitude and frequency on the susceptibility.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, Phys. Rev. B (in July 1st

Dielectric nonlinearity of relaxor ferroelectric ceramics at low ac drives

Dielectric nonlinear response of (PbMg$_{1/3}$Nb$_{2/3}$O$_3$)$_{0.9}$(PbTiO$_3$)$_{0.1}$ (0.9PMN-0.1PT) relaxor ceramics was investigated under different ac drive voltages. It was observed that: (i) the dielectric permittivity is independent on ac field amplitude at high temperatures; (ii) with increasing ac drive, the permittivity maximum increases, and the temperature of the maximum shifts to lower temperature; (iii) the nonlinear effect is weakened when the measurement frequency increases. The influences of increasing ac drive were found to be similar to that of decreasing frequency. It is believed that the dielectric nonlinearities of relaxors at low drives can be explained by the phase transition theory of ergodic space shrinking in succession. A Monte Carlo simulation was performed on the flips of micro polarizations at low ac drives to verify the theory.Comment: Submitted to J. Phys.: Cond. Matte

The polarizability model for ferroelectricity in perovskite oxides

This article reviews the polarizability model and its applications to ferroelectric perovskite oxides. The motivation for the introduction of the model is discussed and nonlinear oxygen ion polarizability effects and their lattice dynamical implementation outlined. While a large part of this work is dedicated to results obtained within the self-consistent-phonon approximation (SPA), also nonlinear solutions of the model are handled which are of interest to the physics of relaxor ferroelectrics, domain wall motions, incommensurate phase transitions. The main emphasis is to compare the results of the model with experimental data and to predict novel phenomena.Comment: 55 pages, 35 figure

Mechanism of Lattice-Distortion-Induced Electric-Polarization Flop in the Multiferroic Perovskite Manganites

Magnetoelectric phase diagrams of the perovskite manganites, Eu1-xYxMnO3 and Gd1-xTbxMnO3, are theoretically studied. We first construct a microscopic model, and then analyze the model using the Monte-Carlo method. We reproduce the diagrams, which contain two different multiferroic states, i.e., the ab-plane spin cycloid with electric polarization P//a and the bc-plane spin cycloid with P//c. We reveal that their competition originates from a conflict between the single-ion anisotropy and the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction, which is controlled by the second-neighbor spin exchanges enhanced by the GdFeO3-type distortion. This leads to a P flop from a to c with increasing x in agreement with the experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Recalculated results after correcting errors in the assignment of DM vectors. The conclusion is not affecte

Expression of Regulatory Platelet MicroRNAs in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

Background: Increased platelet activation in sickle cell disease (SCD) contributes to a state of hypercoagulability and confers a risk of thromboembolic complications. The role for post-transcriptional regulation of the platelet transcriptome by microRNAs (miRNAs) in SCD has not been previously explored. This is the first study to determine whether platelets from SCD exhibit an altered miRNA expression profile. Methods and Findings: We analyzed the expression of miRNAs isolated from platelets from a primary cohort (SCD = 19, controls = 10) and a validation cohort (SCD = 7, controls = 7) by hybridizing to the Agilent miRNA microarrays. A dramatic difference in miRNA expression profiles between patients and controls was noted in both cohorts separately. A total of 40 differentially expressed platelet miRNAs were identified as common in both cohorts (p-value 0.05, fold change>2) with 24 miRNAs downregulated. Interestingly, 14 of the 24 downregulated miRNAs were members of three families - miR-329, miR-376 and miR-154 - which localized to the epigenetically regulated, maternally imprinted chromosome 14q32 region. We validated the downregulated miRNAs, miR-376a and miR-409-3p, and an upregulated miR-1225-3p using qRT-PCR. Over-expression of the miR-1225-3p in the Meg01 cells was followed by mRNA expression profiling to identify mRNA targets. This resulted in significant transcriptional repression of 1605 transcripts. A combinatorial approach using Meg01 mRNA expression profiles following miR-1225-3p overexpression, a computational prediction analysis of miRNA target sequences and a previously published set of differentially expressed platelet transcripts from SCD patients, identified three novel platelet mRNA targets: PBXIP1, PLAGL2 and PHF20L1. Conclusions: We have identified significant differences in functionally active platelet miRNAs in patients with SCD as compared to controls. These data provide an important inventory of differentially expressed miRNAs in SCD patients and an experimental framework for future studies of miRNAs as regulators of biological pathways in platelets. © 2013 Jain et al