The smooth muscle cell directly drives the contraction of the vascular wall and hence
regulates the size of the blood vessel lumen. We review here the current understanding of …

The detrusor smooth muscle is the main muscle component of the urinary bladder wall. Its
ability to contract over a large length interval and to relax determines the bladder function …

Work performed with differentiated contractile smooth muscle tissue over the last two
decades has made clear that covalent modification of myosin by phosphorylation of the 20 …

Resolving the distribution of specific proteins at the nanoscale in the ultrastructural context of
the cell is a major challenge in fluorescence microscopy. We report the discovery of a new …

Calponin is an actin filament-associated regulatory protein expressed in smooth muscle and
many types of non-muscle cells. Three homologous genes, CNN1, CNN2 and CNN 3 …

The vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP) is a major substrate for cyclic nucleotide-
dependent kinases in platelets and other cardiovascular cells. It promotes actin nucleation …

Morphological, functional, molecular and cell biology studies have revealed a striking
multifunctional nature of individual smooth muscle cells (SMC). SMCs manifest phenotypic …

Smooth muscle cells (SMC) exhibit a functional plasticity, modulating from the mature
phenotype in which the primary function is contraction, to a less differentiated state with …

In a search for additional Ca2+ regulatory components in vascular smooth muscle, a novel
troponin T-like protein was purified from bovine aorta smooth muscle. The isolated protein …

LR11 is an ApoE receptor that is enriched in the brain. We have shown that LR11 is
markedly downregulated in patients with sporadic Alzheimer disease (AD). This finding led …