Muller radial glia accumulate glial fibrillary acid protein (GFAP) in response to retinal injuries. We have studied the changes in cellular localization of GFAP in genetically caused retinal dystrophy in strains of cat and mouse: Abyssinian cats with progressive retinal dystrophy, and mice homoand heterozygous for the retinal degeneration (rd) and retinal degeneration slow (rds) genes. The foll...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE We sought to develop a model system for live analysis of brain inflammatory response in ischemic injury. METHODS Using a reporter mouse-expressing luciferase gene under transcriptional control of the murine glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) promoter (GFAP-luc mice) and biophotonic/bioluminescent imaging as tools, we developed a model system for in vivo analysis of ...

Toxoplasma gondii infects astrocytes, neurons and microglia cells in the CNS and, after acute encephalitis, persists within neurons. Robust astrocyte activation is a hallmark of Toxoplasma encephalitis (TE); however, the in vivo function of astrocytes is largely unknown. To study their role in TE we generated C57BL/6 GFAP-Cre gp130(fl/fl) mice (where GFAP is glial fibrillary acid protein), whic...

BACKGROUND Ischemic injury to the central nervous system causes cellular activation and disintegration, leading to release of cell-type-specific proteins into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). We investigated CSF concentrations of myelin basic protein (MBP), glial fibrillary astrocytic protein (GFAP), the calcium-binding protein S100B, and neuron-specific enolase (NSE) in acute ischemic stroke pat...

Astrocytes are the most abundant glial cell type in the central nervous system (CNS) and are known to fulfill critical homeostatic functions. Dysfunction of activated astrocytes is also known to participate in the development of several neurological diseases. Astrocytes can be uniquely identified by expression of the intermediate filament protein glial acidic fibrillary protein (GFAP). Herein, ...

Transgenic expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) in the CNS under the control of the glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) gene promoter (GFAP-IL6 mice) causes significant damage and alters the expression of many genes, including a dramatic upregulation of metallothionein-I (MT-I). The findings in this report support the idea that the upregulation of MT-I observed in GFAP-IL6 mice is an important...

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) and leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) signaling both promote the differentiation of neural stem/progenitor cells into glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunoreactive cells. This study compares the cellular and molecular characteristics, and the potentiality, of GFAP(+) cells generated by these different signaling pathways. Treatment of cultured embryonic su...

The present study follows the early events in the development of astroglia in rat embryonic (E15) tissue grafted into the cortex of adult rats. Astroglial elements (radial glia and astrocytes) were studied by glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and vimentin immunohistochemistry on post-transplantation (PT) days 7, 11, 14, 17, and 21. At PT7, GFAP-immunopositive elements were only scarce fibe...

Cerebrospinal fluids (CSFs) from 9 Pug dogs with necrotizing meningoencephalitis (NME: Pug dog encephalitis) were examined to identify the antigens for anti-astrocyte autoantibodies. Each CSF exhibited a positive reaction to the cytoplasm of cultured canine astrocytes by an indirect fluorescent antibody test. In an immunoblotting analysis on normal canine brain proteins, eight of 9 CSFs showed ...