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(Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2006;26:237.)
© 2006 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorials

Arginine/Arginase NO NO NO

Godfrey S. Getz; Catherine A. Reardon

From the Department of Pathology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.

Correspondence to Godfrey S. Getz, University of Chicago, Department of Pathology MC 1089, 5841 S Maryland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail g-getz@uchicago.edu

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Arginine is a semi-essential amino acid that plays a critical role in several metabolic pathways. The best known of these is as the immediate precursor of urea in the liver and to a lesser extent in the intestine.¹ The enzyme responsible for the cleavage of arginine to produce urea is arginase, which is the only enzyme in the urea cycle that comes in two forms, arginase I, a cytosolic enzyme, and arginase II, a mitochondrial enzyme. These enzymes exist not only in the liver and intestine where urea is generated but are also widely distributed in the body. Ornithine, the other product of the cleavage of arginine by arginase, is a precursor of proline and polyamines such as spermine, spermidine, and putrescine. Arginine is also the precursor of nitric oxide (NO).

See page 365

In an important article authored by Teupser and colleagues,² arginase in macrophages has been identified as a candidate gene influencing atheroresponsiveness. They created and studied two strains of rabbits with genetically determined high (HAR) and low (LAR) atherosclerosis susceptibility. Subtractive suppression hybridization was used to screen for genes that were more highly expressed in macrophages from LAR rabbits. Among the 42 clones identified were four differentially expressed genes with potential relevance to atherogenesis. These were OC2 protein, fibronectin, ferritin H-chain, and arginase I. Despite their identification in the screen, the first three genes were not differentially expressed in macrophages between HAR and LAR animals when checked by quantitative RT-PCR. In contrast, arginase I was more highly . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Related Article:

Identification of Macrophage Arginase I as a New Candidate Gene of Atherosclerosis Resistance

Daniel Teupser, Ralph Burkhardt, Wolfgang Wilfert, Ivonne Haffner, Klaus Nebendahl, and Joachim Thiery
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