Perinatal Development of Angiotensin – Converting Enzyme in the Rat’s Blood

Abstract

Angiotensin-I-converting enzyme (ACE) activity was measured by a fluorimetric technique in serum samples taken from rat fetuses and their mothers. The samples were collected from anesthetized rats on consecutive days from day 18 of gestation to day 22 (day of delivery) and one day after birth. Fetal ACE activities were significantly higher than the corresponding maternal values which remained nearly unchanged during pregnancy. No dramatic changes in serum ACE activity of the developing fetuses could be observed.

Changes in Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme during Pregnancy in the Guinea Pig

“…Although angiotensin II concentrations during pregnancy have been extensively measured [3], ACE activity seems to have been less stud ied. Serum ACE activity was reported [4] not to differ between pregnant and nonpregnant rats, but activity in the pregnant rat was higher than in the nonpregnant one and might have been significantly different with a larger number of observations. In women serum ACE activity is decreased during pregnancy [5,6] and has been reported both to increase at the end of pregnancy [5,7] and not to change [3].…”

Renal Modulation: The Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System (RAAS)

“…Plasma renin activity and plasma aldosterone levels are markedly increased in preterm human infants in the first 3 weeks of life (127). While fetal ACE levels remain stable during gestation in rats (128), serum ACE activity has been reported by some to be higher in late fetal than in neonatal life in humans (128)(129)(130), lambs and guinea pigs (131,132). In contrast, renal ACE activity may increase with age, at least in pigs and horses (133,134).…”

Quantum Earth mover's distance, No-go Quantum Kantorovich-Rubinstein theorem, and Quantum Marginal Problem

“…Besides being well-studied in probability theory and the theory of optimal transport, the earth mover's distance is increasingly seeing applications in computer science and beyond. It is widely used in content-based image retrieval to compute distances between the color histograms of two digital images [5].In this case, the region is the image's domain, and the total amount of light (or ink) is the dirt to be rearranged. The same technique can be used for any other quantitative pixel attribute, such as luminance, gradient, apparent motion in a video frame, etc.…”