by Tony Fitzpatrick
When Mae West pronounced that too much of a good thing sometimes is a good thing, she probably didn't have the versatile molecule nitric oxide in mind. The molecule is found throughout the biomedical world, playing a vital, though often baffling, role in everything from blood pressure, to bone loss, to rheumatoid arthritis, to male erection.
Now, biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have confirmed the legendary West's observation by showing that a high concentration of nitric oxide in large bone cells called osteoclasts may serve to prevent osteoclasts from eating too much bone away, thus preventing bone loss associated with diseases such as osteoporosis.
Nitric oxide (NO) is not to be confused with nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. Nitric oxide was Science magazine's "Molecule of the Year" in 1992, a biochemical poster boy for ambiguous behavior. Like a character in an old Western, at times it wears the good guy's white hat, only to switch and don the villain's black hat. For instance, human cells produce one form of nitric oxide as a weapon against invading bacteria, but very high concentrations of the molecule can make NO a killer of the very cells that produce it because NO can act as a free radical and destroy cells.
Philip Osdoby, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences at Washington
University, and his team, including his wife Patricia Collin-Osdoby, Ph.D.,
added a monoclonal antibody the team isolated and developed to osteoclast cells
believing that the antibody would hone in on a target molecule it recognizes in
the osteoclast cells. This target molecule is called an antigen. The antibody
(Mab 121F) binds to the antigen, interfering with its function. In testing the
antigen/antibody reaction, the biologists found that introducing the antibody
into the osteoclasts halted the process of bone resorption, the work of
osteoclasts whereby, when t
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Contact: Tony Fitzpatrick
p72245tf@wuvmd.wustl.edu
(314) 935-5272
Washington University in St. Louis
1-Mar-1998