BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is increasingly recognized as an important causal factor of many diseases. Targeting ER stress has now emerged as a new therapeutic strategy for treating cardiovascular diseases. Here we …

Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a disease of the sarcomere and may lead to hypertrophic, dilated, restrictive, and/or arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, 38 congestive heart failure, or sudden cardiac death. We hypothesized that hearts from 39 …

Angiogenesis is a critical feature of plaque development in atherosclerosis and might play a key role in both the initiation and later rupture of plaques. The precursory molecular or cellular pro-angiogenic events that initiate plaque growth and that …

Our knowledge of organ ontogeny is largely based on loss-of-function (knockout) or gain-of-function (transgenesis) approaches. However, developmental modulators such as proteins, mRNAs, microRNAs(miRNAs), small interfering RNAs, and other small molecules …

Neurons in layer IV of the rodent whisker somatosensory cortex are tangentially organized in periodic clusters called barrels, each of which is innervated by thalamocortical axons transmitting sensory information from a single principal whisker, together …

The fetal intestinal mucosa is characterized by elevated Toll-like re- ceptor 4 (TLR4) expression, which can lead to the development of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC)—a devastating inflammatory dis- ease of the premature intestine—upon exposure to …

The formation and perfusion of developing renal blood vessels (apart from glomeruli) are greatly understudied. As vasculature develops via angiogenesis (which is the branching off of major vessels) and vasculogenesis ( in vi de no v o vessel formation), …

Background: Thyroid carcinoma is the most common endocrine malignancy and has an increasing incidence. High-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) has a spatial resolution of 30 lm, which is a property that has been exploited for thyroid visualization and analysis …

Ultrasound contrast-enhanced imaging can convey essential quantitative information regarding tissue vascularity and perfusion and, in targeted applications, facilitate the detection and measure of vascular biomarkers at the molecular level. Within the …

PURPOSE: Decreased expression of elastin results in smaller, less compliant arteries and high blood pressure. In mice, these differences become more significant with postnatal development. It is known that arterial size and compliance directly affect …