Abstract: Aluminum is not an essential element but is rather toxic and the need to protect themselves from aluminum toxicity is crucial for living organisms. Aluminum is the third abundant element and the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, therefore exposure to aluminum is inevitable in daily life. It was shown that the rate of excretion of aluminum in the urine was assumed to have a limiting value. As a result, an excess intake of aluminum indicated that the aluminum content in the body remained high for several days after the absorption of aluminum from the intestine.
It is widely known that accumulation of aluminum in the body has been linked to disease conditions. The toxic effects of aluminum to neuronal cells were examined to show apoptotic cell death via endoplasmic reticulum stress, implicating an influence of aluminum on the gene expression. Also, it was shown that astrocyte-neuron interaction was important in the process of toxic effects in the central nervous system. Renin was the only positively identified up-regulated gene determined by DNA sequencing. The up-regulation of renin was confirmed by RT-PCR and Western blotting experiments in the dose dependent treatments and the time course observation in mice. The up-regulation of the renin expression by aluminum is a strong indication of the influence of aluminum on the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system, resulting in the induction of essential hypertension.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Shunsuke Meshitsuka graduated from Waseda University in 1970, and got his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Science of the University of Tokyo in 1977, and got D. Med. from Tottori University Faculty of Medicine in 1987. He got a position of a researcher in Sagami Chemical Research Center in 1972. He moved to Tottori University Medical School as an assistant professor in 1976. After working in the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia as a postdoctoral fellow he became an associate professor in 1995. He was an invited researcher of Riken Genome Science Research Center, Yokohama from 2004 to 2006, and also was a visiting researcher of Osaka University Institute for Protein Research from 1981 to 2010. His main research area is inorganic biochemistry and the structure of related biological molecules.