Gas vesicles are intracellular, microbial flotation devices that consist of mainly one protein, GvpA. The formation of halobacterial gas vesicles occurs along a complex pathway involving 14 different gvp genes that are clustered in a genomic region termed the "vac region". Various vac regions found in Halobacterium salinarum (p-vac and c-vac), Haloferax mediterranei (mc-vac), and Natronobacterium vacuolatum (nv-vac) have been investigated. Except for the latter vac region, the arrangement of the gvp genes is identical. Single gvp genes have been mutated to study the effect on gas vesicle synthesis in transformants and to determine their possible function. Each vac region exhibits a characteristic transcription pattern, and regulatory steps have been observed at the DNA, RNA, and protein level, indicating a complex regulatory network acting during gas vesicle gene expression.

The haloalkaliphilic archaeon Natronobacterium vacuolatum forms cylinder-shaped gas vesicles throughout the growth cycle when grown in media containing 15-25% NaCl. Cells cultivated in media containing 13% NaCl are, however, gas-vesicle-free. The major gas vesicle structural protein, nv-GvpA, was detected by an antiserum raised against the gas vesicles of Haloferax mediterranei; the antiserum reacted with an 8.3-kDa protein in samples containing cell extracts or purified gas vesicles of N. vacuolatum. The gene encoding nv-GvpA was isolated together with six additional gvp genes; these genes are arranged consecutively in a cluster as nv-gvpACNOFGH and are cotranscribed. Transcript analysis by primer extension revealed only one start site three nucleotides upstream of the nv-gvpA reading frame. This arrangement of gvp genes differs from that of the gas-vesicle-encoding genes in Halobacterium salinarium and Hf. mediterranei. The comparison of the deduced Gvp protein sequences indicated similarities with the respective halobacterial Gvp proteins, with GvpA exhibiting the highest degree of conservation (97-100%). The second gas vesicle structural protein, nv-GvpC, was 150-250 amino acids longer than all other halobacterial GvpC proteins and was much less conserved (48-73%). The expression of the nv-gvp genes was monitored in N. vacuolatum cells cultivated in 20 or 13% salt media. Northern and Western analyses showed that despite the lack of gas vesicles in cells grown in 13% salt medium, the gvpACNOFGH gene cluster was transcribed and GvpA protein was synthesized, suggesting that the absence of gas vesicles is not due to a lack of transcription.

This study was designed to compare some behavioral and biochemical effects of chronic treatment with a range of antipsychotic drugs. Gene expression of enkephalinAntipsychotic drugs are sometimes referred to as "atypical" if they demonstrate the ability to produce an antipsychotic action in most patients but with significantly less extrapyramidal side effects than classical (typical) antipsychotics (Fleischhacker and Hummer 1997). Lately, this distinction between "typical" and "atypical" antipsychotics has become the focus for much research aimed at establishing the pharmacological characteristics that serve to distinguish atypical antipsychotic drugs from the typical ones (Arnt and Skarsfeldt 1998). For example, in animals, acute and chronic treatment with these compounds causes distinct behavioral changes and alterations in the expression of different genes.Alterations in the biosynthesis of synaptic proteins and their mRNAs can be used to investigate changes in neuronal activity following different neuronal stimuli (MacArthur and Eiden 1996). Haloperidol increases tissue levels of enkephalin and the expression of mRNA (Normand et al. 1987;Romano et al. 1987) in medium spiny striatal neurons which are associated with the dopamine 2 receptor (Le Moine et al. 1991) whereas clozapine, the prototypical "atypical" antipsychotic, does not induce catalepsy and does not lead to an increased enkephalin gene expression in the striatum (Mercugliano and Chesselet 1992). Consequently, antipsychotics which do not induce catalepsy appear unlikely to increase enkephalin biosynthesis (Augood et al. 1993;Mijnster et al. 1998). Therefore, both behavioral changes and a distinct pattern of gene expression may be used to predict an atypical profile for an antipsychotic compound.The prefrontal cortex is an important brain area in schizophrenia research (Knable and Weinberger 1997;O'Donnell and Grace 1998). In animals, antipsychotic treatment causes an induction of immediate early genes in various brain areas including the prefrontal cortex. In this region, acute application of haloperidol or clozapine induces a differential expression of immediate early genes (Nguyen et al. 1992;Robertson and Fibiger 1992;Deutch and Duman 1996). Therefore, a different mechanism of action was postulated for haloperidol or clozapine treatment. However, most of these experiments investigated the induction of early genes after acute treatment.Chromogranin A, chromogranin B, and secretogranin II belong to the chromogranin family which are large protein molecules found in large dense core vesicles. They are endoproteolytically processed to smaller peptides, and are released after neuronal stimulation (Huttner et al. 1991). The distribution of chromogranin B (Mahata et al. 1991;Kroesen et al. 1996), secretogranin II mRNA, and their immunoreactivity (Marksteiner et al. 1993a) have been studied in rat brains. The biosynthesis of chromogranins is regulated by different stimuli (Shen and Gundlach 1996). For example, ten days of treatment with clozapine or hal...

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