Marsupial tammar wallaby delivers milk bioactives to altricial pouch young to support lung development.

ABSTRACT: Our research is exploiting the marsupial as a model to understand the signals required for lung development. Marsupials have a unique reproductive strategy, the mother gives birth to altricial neonate with an immature lung and the changes in milk composition during lactation in marsupials appears to provide bioactives that can regulate diverse aspects of lung development, including branching morphogenesis, cell proliferation and cell differentiation. These effects are seen with milk collected between 25 and 100days postpartum. To better understand the temporal effects of milk composition on postnatal lung development we used a cross-fostering technique to restrict the tammar pouch young to milk composition not extending beyond day 25 for 45days of its early postnatal life. These particular

SUBMITTER: Modepalli V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5161226 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature