It has been proposed that contractile proteins may mediate the events of the exocytotic release of hormones or neurotransmitters because of the similarities between the process of stimulus-secretion coupling and excitation-contraction coupling. / Bovine adrenal medullary chromaffin cells were isolated and cultured and the morphological and secretory characteristics of these cells investigated. The results demonstrated that cultured chromaffin cells were a good model for developmental and secretory studies. Two isomeric forms of actin ((beta) and (gamma)), differing in isoelectric properties, were purified from chromaffin cells and characterized. The immunocytochemical localization of actin using an anti-chicken gizzard actin antibody showed that actin is distributed in a granular pattern in chromaffin cells in culture and that this distribution was similar to that of dopamine (beta)-hydroxylase. This suggested that actin might be associated with the chromaffin granules and indeed, actin was found when chromaffin granule membrane proteins were analyzed by SDS gel electrophoresis. / This evidence supports our hypothesis that actin, along with the other contractile proteins, may mediate the process of stimulus-secretion coupling.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.77132 |
| Date | January 1981 |
| Creators | Lee, Raymond W. H. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000137946, proquestno: AAINK57998, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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