Expression of scaffolding, signalling and contractile-filament proteins in human myometria: effects of pregnancy and labour

Michael Riley, Philip N. Baker, Rachel M. Tribe, Michael J. Taggart
In: Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine · 2005 · vol. 9(1) , pp. 122–134 · doi:10.1111/j.1582-4934.2005.tb00342.x · PMID:15784170 · W1966799778
article OA: green CC0 ⤵ 1 in-corpus citation
🔓 Open OA copy View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-12 ⓘ

Pregnancy alters myometrial expression of ROKalpha, MLC20, and h-caldesmon, but these changes are not further modified by labor onset.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Successful parturition requires the co-ordination of numerous myometrial signalling events to allow for timely and efficient uterine contractions. Late pregnancy and labour onset in humans may be associated with changes in the expression of myometrial proteins implicated in such uterine contractile signal integration. Accordingly, in myometria from non-pregnant women and pregnant women, not in labour or in labour, we examined the content of putative plasmalemmal scaffolding proteins (caveolin-1 and -2) and compared these to the proportions of signal transducing rho-associated kinases (ROKalpha and beta) and contractile filament-associated proteins alpha-actin, myosin regulatory light chain (MLC(20)) and h-caldesmon. There was no effect of pregnancy or labour on the proportion of caveolin, ROK betaor alpha-actin. However, pregnancy was associated with a decrease in ROKalpha and MLC(20) such that ROK alpha: alpha-actin and MLC(20): alpha-actin ratios were reduced compared to myometria of non-pregnant women. In contrast, h-caldesmon was up-regulated in pregnancy resulting in an elevated h-caldesmon: alpha-actin ratio. There were, however, no further significant changes in ROK alpha, MLC(20) or h-caldesmon expression with spontaneous or oxytocin-induced labour. These data suggest that the mechanism(s) integrating myometrial signalling events with the onset of human labour does not involve differential alterations of the cellular expressions of caveolins, ROK, alpha-actin, MLC(20) or h-caldesmon.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Citation neighborhood (sparse)

Too few in-corpus citations on either side for a chart; here are the lists.

Cites (3)

Cited by (1)

References (39)

Cited by (1)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK