Coronary atherosclerosis -- a postmortem histopathological study.

Cardiovascular disease in general and coronary heart disease in particular remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. The aim of this study was to look at the prevalence of coronary atherosclerosis, its severity and site of involvement in postmortem hearts. The hearts of 30-60 yrs old, fifty dead victims were considered who died from various natural and unnatural deaths. After autopsy, coronary arteries were inspected grossly and microscopically. Out of all these cases, 10 cases (20 %) showed no pathological lesions. Total distribution of lesions in the coronaries are as follows; 34 (68 %) atheromatous lesions in Left Anterior Descending Artery, 25 (50 %) lesions in the Right Coronary Artery, 18 (36 %) lesions in Left Circumflex. Proximal involvement was more common except in the right coronary artery, which was involved distally. The overall prevalence of coronary atherosclerosis in the present study was comparable with that noted by other investigators in autopsy studied. There is a higher prevalence of atherosclerosis in Indians, which may be due to changes in life-styles and other risks factors (Tab. 1, Ref. 14). Full Text in PDF www.elis.sk.

Laccase of Cyathus bulleri: structural, catalytic characterization and expression in Escherichia coli.

Cyathus bulleri, a ligninolytic fungus, produces a single laccase the internal peptides (3) of which bear similarity to laccases of several white rot fungi. Comparison of the total amino acid composition of this laccase with several fungal laccases indicated dissimilarity in the proportion of some basic and hydrophobic amino acids. Analysis of the circular dichroism spectrum of the protein indicated 37% alpha-helical, 26% beta-sheet and 38% random coil content which differed significantly from that in the solved structures of other laccases, which contain higher beta-sheet structures. The critical role of the carboxylic group containing amino acids was demonstrated by determining the kinetic parameters at different pH and this was confirmed by the observation that a critical Asp is strongly conserved in both Ascomycete and Basidiomycete laccases. The enzyme was denatured in the presence of a number of denaturing agents and refolded back to functional state with copper. In the folding experiments under alkaline conditions, zinc could replace copper in restoring 100% of laccase activity indicating the non-essential role of copper in this laccase. The laccase was expressed in Escherichia coli by a modification of the ligation-anchored PCR approach making it the first fungal laccase to be expressed in a bacterial host. The laccase sequence was confirmed by way of analysis of a 435 bp sequence of the insert.