| Research Abstract |
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mechanism underlying the contractility of the proliferating airway smooth muscle. We could obtain the following results.
1. We could construct the recombinant baculo virus vector, which can be infected with a high efficiency to the mammalian cell, by inserting the cytomegalo virus promotor and the cDNA of interest. This virus could successfully transfected to the NIH 3T3 fibroblast, porcine tracheal smooth muscle cells and porcine coronary smooth muscle cells. It took us long time to opitimize the condition for the transfection. However, we could overcome this problem by modifying the purification process of the recombinant baculo virus.
2. We could also establish the method to measure ismetric tension using the cultured smooth muscle cells by reconstituting these cells into tissue-like preparation. The RhoA transfected cells showed 2-3 times greater contractility, compared with the control treatment.
3. On the contrary, the knock-down of RhoA expression by RNA interference greatly inhibited the smooth muscle contractility.
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