Metabolic and hormonal parameters of humans during long-term hyperbaric exposure (the recompression treatment table)]

Several metabolic and hormonal parameters were evaluated in blood of two human subjects during simulation of an extended saturation dive. Increases in creatine kinase and an upward trend in cholesterol and glucose were observed after decompression. The levels of TTH and thyroxin went up in both subjects during exposure. The significant changes in cortisol, ACTH, insulin and C-peptide were a fingerprint of stress-reaction. After eight days of recovery most of the parameters returned to baseline values. The investigation suggests that the recompression treatment table did not cause pathological changes in the biochemical and hormonal parameters of humans.     

Alterations of cortical neurons and their dendrites after chronic alcohol intoxication

Alterations occurring in the neurons of rat sensorimotor cortex 1, 2, and 4 months after a 4-month alcohol intoxication and 1 and 4 months after a 1-year alcoholization are studied by the methods of Nissl and Golgi. Pronounced dystrophic changes in cortical neurons and dendrites as well as reparative processes in the cell body are revealed 1 month after a 4-month intoxication. The recovery period for the upper cortical layer neurons (phylogenetically younger) is faster than that of neurons from the lower layers (phylogenetically older), as well as that of hypochromatousvs. hyperchromatous cells. Normalization of dendrite structure is slower than that of the cell body. Four months after a 1-year alcohol intoxication the structure of cortical neurons and dendrites is not restored. Translated fromByulleten' Eksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 122, No. 10, pp. 467–470, October, 1996     

Fractionation of a chalone-containing preparation from Ehrlich's ascites tumor by high performance liquid chromatography

Department of Biology, Medico-Biological Faculty, and Applied Research Laboratory of Ecology, Toxicology, and Metabolism of Medicinal Preparations, attached to the Department of Biochemistry, Medico-Biological Faculty, N. I. Pirogov Second Moscow Medical Institute. Translated from Byulleten' Éksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 112, No. 10, pp. 418–419, October, 1991.     

An automated technique for measuring the area of contrasted bronchi

Central Scientific-Research Institute for Tuberculosis. Institute for Problems of Information Transmission, Moscow. Translated from Meditsinskaya Tekhnika, No. 3, pp. 30–32, May–June, 1992.     

The end adjusts the means: Heterochromatin remodelling during terminal cell differentiation

All cells that constitute mature tissues in an eukaryotic organism undergo a multistep process of cell differentiation. At the terminal stage of this process, cells either cease to proliferate forever or rest for a very long period of time. During terminal differentiation, most of the genes that are required for cell ‘housekeeping’ functions, such as proto-oncogenes and other cell-cycle and cell proliferation genes, become stably repressed. At the same time, nuclear chromatin undergoes dramatic morphological and structural changes at the higher-order levels of chromatin organization. These changes involve both constitutively inactive chromosomal regions (constitutive heterochromatin) and the formerly active genes that become silenced and structurally modified to form facultative heterochromatin. Here we approach terminal cell differentiation as a unique system that allows us to combine biochemical, ultrastructural and molecular genetic techniques to study the relationship between the hierarchy of chromatin higher-order structures in the nucleus and its function(s) in dynamic packing of genetic material in a form that remains amenable to regulation of gene activity and other DNA-dependent cellular processes.