Mice deficient for the mouse telomerase RNA (mTR-/-) and lacking telomerase activity can only be bred for approximately six generations due to decreased male and female fertility and to an increased embryonic lethality associated with a neural tube closure defect. Although late generation mTR-/- mice show defects in the hematopoietic system, they are viable to adulthood, only showing a decrease...

The interplay of environmental and genetic factors may lead to a spectrum of physiological and behavioral outcomes. How environmental stress factors interact with the diverse mouse genomes is still poorly understood and elucidating the underlying interactions requires specific stress models that can target integrated physiological systems. Here, we employ behavioral tests and whole-body plethys...

Introduction: Doxorubicin is frequently used for treatment of several types of cancer. Doxorubicin cardiac toxicity has limited the use of this drug. Corticosteroids may prevent doxorubicin induced cardiotoxicity. Therefore the aim of this study was to evaluate mouse embryonic stem cells derived cardiomyocytes as a model to evaluate the effect of Doxorubicin and dexamethasone. Methods: Mouse ...

The non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse is a polygenic model for type 1 diabetes that is characterized by insulitis, a leukocytic infiltration of the pancreatic islets. During ~35 years since the original inbred strain was developed in Japan, NOD substrains have been established at different laboratories around the world. Although environmental differences among NOD colonies capable of impacting dia...

OBJECTIVES Treating olfactory dysfunction is a challenge for physicians. One of the therapeutic options could be transplantation of stem cells. In this study, neural stem cells were transplanted into anosmic mice. METHODS Neural stem cells were generated from the olfactory bulb of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-transgenic C57BL6 mice. Anosmia were induced by injection of intraperitoneal 3-me...

Humans with PROP1 mutations have multiple pituitary hormone deficiencies (MPHD) that typically advance from growth insufficiency diagnosed in infancy to include more severe growth hormone (GH) deficiency and progressive reduction in other anterior pituitary hormones, eventually including adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) deficiency and hypocortisolism. Congenital deficiencies of GH, prolactin,...

Thermal hyperalgesia is the heightened sensitivity to heat and occurs during inflammation. NGF-induced thermal hyperalgesia is neutrophil-dependent (Foster et al., 2003). This group previously found that the TRPV1 receptor mediates a bilateral thermal hyperalgesia in TNFα-induced inflammation (Russell et al., 2005), but it is not yet known how TNFα mediates the response. The aim of this study w...

INTRODUCTION Several evidences show that muscles have an endocrine function. Glucocorticoid, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone receptors have already been found in normal skeletal muscles, but not in dystrophic muscles. METHODS The gene expression of hormone receptors was compared between dystrophic and healthy muscles in mdx and C57BL6 mice strains. RESULTS The mdx mice showed a sig...

As part of the Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) process, the endonuclease XPG is involved in repair of helix-distorting DNA lesions, but the protein has also been implicated in several other DNA repair systems, complicating genotype-phenotype relationship in XPG patients. Defects in XPG can cause either the cancer-prone condition xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) alone, or XP combined with the severe ...

introduction: helicobacter pylori (h. pylori) is a gastric pathogen of primates and causes active chronic gastritis as well as peptic ulcers. a wide range of studies is in effect to prevent or cure helicobacter infection and thus its associated disorders. in order to test various drug regimens as well as potential vaccines against h. pylori infection, a suitable animal model is required which s...