Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: EC:2.6.1.2 (alanine aminotransferase)
 26,722 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The effect of a single oral dose of endosulfan (5 mg/kg body weight) on the uptake of certain nutrients and brush-border enzymes has been studied in rat intestine. The uptake of glucose and alanine was elevated but that of leucine was decreased in endosulfan-fed rats. There was no change in the uptake of phenylalanine and lysine in insecticide-fed rats. The activities of brush-border sucrase and alkaline phosphatase were considerably increased while the activity of Na+ K+ ATPase was reduced in endosulfan-exposed animals. The leucine aminopeptidase activity was unaffected in pesticide-treated rats. There was a significant decrease in cellular LDH and GOT activities with no change in GPT activity. Neither was there a considerable increase in the cellular glucose-6-phosphatase activity (P less than 0.01) in the pesticide-fed rats. These results suggest that endosulfan toxicity induces certain functional changes in the intestine.
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PMID:Effect of a single oral dose of endosulfan on intestinal uptake of nutrients and on brush-border enzymes in rats. 618 May 24

It is well established that Giardia infection causes malabsorption. However, the precise mechanism of such a malabsorption is not known. To investigate this, transport studies, using the tissue accumulation technique, were carried out in mice infected with G. lamblia obtained from human stools. There was a significant fall in the transport of D-glucose, L-alanine and glycine in the infected animals compared with the controls. Kinetics of the D-glucose and glycine transport system were examined by measuring the tissue uptake in the presence of different concentrations of the substrate. For glucose, the affinity constant (Km) for the transport site was the same (4 . 37mM) in normal and infected animals but the maximal transport rate (V max) was considerably reduced in infected animals (158 . 7 mu moles/hr/g tissue) compared with (357 . 1 microgram moles/hr/g tissue) in controls. Results with glycine were similar; the Km was similar in control and infected animals (5 . 7 mM) whereas the V max was reduced in infected animals (27 . 02 microgram moles/hr/g tissue) compared with controls (45 . 5 micrograms moles/hr/g tissue). Analysis of the intestinal enzymes showed a significant decrease in the levels of brush border sucrase, lactase and alkaline phosphatase in infected animals; the cellular enzymes, LDH, GOT and GPT remained unaffected. The observed aberrations in the transport functions and brush border enzymes suggest that G. lamblia causes malabsorption by damaging the epithelial membrane of the enterocyte.
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PMID:Transport studies and enzyme assays in mice infected with human Giardia lamblia. 717 14

Evolutionary shifts in diet composition are presumably accompanied by simultaneous changes in digestive physiology. The adaptive modulation hypothesis predicts that activities of digestive enzymes should match the relative levels of their substrates in an animal's diet so that available membrane space and synthetic energy are not wasted on enzymes in excess of need. However, previous studies on captive passerine birds showed high intraspecific phenotypic flexibility only in proteases but not in carbohydrases in response to varying diet composition. In this study, we measured the activities of pancreatic, intestinal, and hepatic enzymes in six wild-caught passerine species. We predicted that if the adaptive modulation hypothesis holds during evolutionary shifts in diet composition in birds, then mass-specific activities of digestive enzymes should be correlated positively with the content of their relevant substrates in species' diets. Whereas mass-specific activities of proteases (aminopeptidase-N, trypsin, chymotrypsin, alanine aminotransferase) were not correlated with estimated dietary protein content, mass-specific activities of all studied carbohydrases (amylase, maltase, sucrase) were positively correlated with estimated dietary starch content. We conclude that activities of carbohydrases but not proteases are evolutionarily matched to diet composition in passerine birds. We hypothesize that the need for nitrogen and essential amino acids can prevent the evolution of a low activity of proteases, even in species feeding on a low-protein diet.
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PMID:Pancreatic and intestinal carbohydrases are matched to dietary starch level in wild passerine birds. 2146 May 30