Actins are extremely highly conserved structural proteins found in all eukaryotic cell cytoskeletons that govern cell structure, movement, and shape integrity. Six distinct actin isoforms, each encoded by a different gene and developmentally-regulated as well as tissue-specific-regulated, have been identified in mammalian cells. The alpha and beta isotypes are cytoplasmic and expressed in a wide variety of cells. However, expression of the alpha skeletal, alpha cardiac, alpha vascular, and gamma enteric variants are more specialized and restricted to specific muscle cell types. Alpha actin smooth muscle is of particular interest as there are only a small number of genes with expression limited to vascular smooth muscle cells, and can be used as a myofibroblast differentiation marker. The alpha-Smooth Muscle Actin antibody was used in both frozen and paraffin-embedded murine whole mounts to confirm that fluorescence-labeled reporter gene constructs could be successfully used to follow cutaneous innervations in transgenic mice (1).
Immunohistochemistry-Paraffin: alpha-Smooth Muscle Actin Antibody
Stanford researchers also used the alpha-SMA antibody in their challenging and sophisticated high-resolution 3D-immunofluorescent array tomography (IAT) of spatial and temporal changes in murine blood vessel wall microarchitecture and morphology pre- and post-aneurysm (2). Other wound repair studies from Emory University performed Actin Alpha 2 Smooth Muscle antibody immunostaining in adult intestine. Their group was interested in identifying the role of the Wnt/beta-catenin secreted antagonist Dkk1 in normal intestinal homeostasis and during wound repair resulting from mucosal injury (3). Accumulation profiles with the Actin Alpha 2 Smooth Muscle antibody give evidence that renal MMP2 plays a protective role in early phases of diabetic nephropathy, providing a new therapeutic target (4). Ying’s group at Dana-Farber have some promising results with the Actin Alpha 2 Smooth Muscle antibody suggesting that the PTEN/phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway is a major tumor suppressor and mutation hotspot in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) (5).
Novus Biologicals offers alpha-Smooth Muscle Actin reagents for your research needs including:
