Search results for "model organism"
showing 10 items of 184 documents
Volatile Drosophila cuticular pheromones are affected by social but not sexual experience.
2012
International audience; Recognition of conspecifics and mates is based on a variety of sensory cues that are specific to the species, sex and social status of each individual. The courtship and mating activity of Drosophila melanogaster flies is thought to depend on the olfactory perception of a male-specific volatile pheromone, cis-vaccenyl acetate (cVA), and the gustatory perception of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHs), some of which are sexually dimorphic. Using two complementary sampling methods (headspace Solid Phase Micro-Extraction [SPME] and solvent extraction) coupled with GC-MS analysis, we measured the dispersion of pheromonal CHs in the air and on the substrate around the fly. We als…
Short-Term Long Chain Omega3 Diet Protects from Neuroinflammatory Processes and Memory Impairment in Aged Mice
2011
Regular consumption of food enriched in omega3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (oméga3 PUFAs) has been shown to reduce risk of cognitive decline in elderly, and possibly development of Alzheimer's disease. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) are the most likely active components of oméga3-rich PUFAs diets in the brain. We therefore hypothesized that exposing mice to a DHA and EPA enriched diet may reduce neuroinflammation and protect against memory impairment in aged mice. For this purpose, mice were exposed to a control diet throughout life and were further submitted to a diet enriched in EPA and DHA during 2 additional months. Cytokine expression together with a thoroug…
Therapeutic effects of hMAPC and hMSC transplantation after stroke in mice.
2012
Stroke represents an attractive target for stem cell therapy. Although different types of cells have been employed in animal models, a direct comparison between cell sources has not been performed. The aim of our study was to assess the effect of human multipotent adult progenitor cells (hMAPCs) and human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) on endogenous neurogenesis, angiogenesis and inflammation following stroke. BALB/Ca-RAG 2(-/-) γC(-/-) mice subjected to FeCl(3) thrombosis mediated stroke were intracranially injected with 2 × 10(5) hMAPCs or hMSCs 2 days after stroke and followed for up to 28 days. We could not detect long-term engraftment of either cell population. However, in comparison w…
Obese Rats Exhibit High Levels of Fat Necrosis and Isoprostanes in Taurocholate-Induced Acute Pancreatitis
2012
BACKGROUND: Obesity is a prognostic factor for severity in acute pancreatitis in humans. Our aim was to assess the role of oxidative stress and abdominal fat in the increased severity of acute pancreatitis in obese rats. METHODOLOGY: Taurocholate-induced acute pancreatitis was performed in lean and obese Zucker rats. Levels of reduced glutathione, oxidized glutathione, L-cysteine, cystine, and S-adenosylmethionine were measured in pancreas as well as the activities of serine/threonine protein phosphatases PP1 and PP2A and tyrosin phosphatases. Isoprostane, malondialdehyde, triglyceride, and free fatty acid levels and lipase activity were measured in plasma and ascites. Lipase activity was m…
Cyclosporine A Impairs the Macrophage Reverse Cholesterol Transport in Mice by Reducing Sterol Fecal Excretion
2012
Despite the efficacy in reducing acute rejection events in organ transplanted subjects, long term therapy with cyclosporine A is associated with increased atherosclerotic cardiovascular morbidity. We studied whether this drug affects the antiatherogenic process of the reverse cholesterol transport from macrophages in vivo. Cyclosporine A 50 mg/kg/d was administered to C57BL/6 mice by subcutaneous injection for 14 days. Macrophage reverse cholesterol transport was assessed by following [(3)H]-cholesterol mobilization from pre-labeled intraperitoneally injected macrophages, expressing or not apolipoprotein E, to plasma, liver and feces. The pharmacological treatment significantly reduced the …
Aspartoacylase-lacZ knockin mice: an engineered model of Canavan disease.
2011
Canavan Disease (CD) is a recessive leukodystrophy caused by loss of function mutations in the gene encoding aspartoacylase (ASPA), an oligodendrocyte-enriched enzyme that hydrolyses N-acetylaspartate (NAA) to acetate and aspartate. The neurological phenotypes of different rodent models of CD vary considerably. Here we report on a novel targeted aspa mouse mutant expressing the bacterial β-Galactosidase (lacZ) gene under the control of the aspa regulatory elements. X-Gal staining in known ASPA expression domains confirms the integrity of the modified locus in heterozygous aspa lacZ-knockin (aspa(lacZ/+)) mice. In addition, abundant ASPA expression was detected in Schwann cells. Homozygous (…
Memory-Based Mismatch Response to Frequency Changes in Rats
2011
Any occasional changes in the acoustic environment are of potential importance for survival. In humans, the preattentive detection of such changes generates the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related brain potentials. MMN is elicited to rare changes (‘deviants’) in a series of otherwise regularly repeating stimuli (‘standards’). Deviant stimuli are detected on the basis of a neural comparison process between the input from the current stimulus and the sensory memory trace of the standard stimuli. It is, however, unclear to what extent animals show a similar comparison process in response to auditory changes. To resolve this issue, epidural potentials were recorded above the pr…
Comparison of Diffusion MRI Acquisition Protocols for the In Vivo Characterization of the Mouse Spinal Cord: Variability Analysis and Application to …
2016
Diffusion-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) has relevant applications in the microstructural characterization of the spinal cord, especially in neurodegenerative diseases. Animal models have a pivotal role in the study of such diseases; however, in vivo spinal dMRI of small animals entails additional challenges that require a systematical investigation of acquisition parameters. The purpose of this study is to compare three acquisition protocols and identify the scanning parameters allowing a robust estimation of the main diffusion quantities and a good sensitivity to neurodegeneration in the mouse spinal cord. For all the protocols, the signal-to-noise and contrast-to noise ratios…
Foxa1 reduces lipid accumulation in human hepatocytes and is down-regulated in nonalcoholic fatty liver.
2012
Triglyceride accumulation in nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) results from unbalanced lipid metabolism which, in the liver, is controlled by several transcription factors. The Foxa subfamily of winged helix/forkhead box (Fox) transcription factors comprises three members which play important roles in controlling both metabolism and homeostasis through the regulation of multiple target genes in the liver, pancreas and adipose tissue. In the mouse liver, Foxa2 is repressed by insulin and mediates fasting responses. Unlike Foxa2 however, the role of Foxa1 in the liver has not yet been investigated in detail. In this study, we evaluate the role of Foxa1 in two human liver cell models, primary cu…
Forward genetics inWolbachia: Regulation ofWolbachiaproliferation by the amplification and deletion of an addictive genomic island
2021
Copyright: © 2021 Duarte et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.