Project description:Earlier, we demonstrated that environmental enrichment (EE) confers resilience against anxiety- and depression-like behaviors and improves learning and memory in the wild mouse Mus booduga. The present study was designed to investigate whether EE can confer resilience against social stress–induced behavioral and molecular alterations in M. booduga. Animals in the experimental groups were subjected to an object recognition memory task, followed by whole-transcriptome analysis of hippocampal tissue samples. We found that social isolation under chronic stress down-regulated genes involved in stress regulation and synaptic plasticity, whereas EE restored object recognition memory and normalized the expression of these genes
Project description:Acetaminophen is a widely used antipyretic and analgesic drug, and its overdose is the leading cause of drug-induced acute liver failure. This study aimed to investigate the effect and mechanism of Lacticaseibacillus casei Shirota (LcS), an extensively used and highly studied probiotic, on acetaminophen-induced acute liver injury. C57BL/6 mice were gavaged with LcS suspension or saline once daily for 7 days before the acute liver injury was induced via intraperitoneal injection of 300 mg/kg acetaminophen. The results showed that LcS significantly decreased acetaminophen-induced liver and ileum injury, as demonstrated by reductions in the increases in aspartate aminotransferase, total bile acids, total bilirubin, indirect bilirubin and hepatic cell necrosis. Moreover, LcS alleviated the acetaminophen-induced intestinal mucosal permeability, elevation in serum IL-1α and lipopolysaccharide, and decreased levels of serum eosinophil chemokine (eotaxin) and hepatic glutathione levels. Furthermore, analysis of the gut microbiota and metabolome showed that LcS reduced the acetaminophen-enriched levels of Cyanobacteria, Oxyphotobacteria, long-chain fatty acids, cholesterol and sugars in the gut. Additionally, the transcriptome and proteomics showed that LcS mitigated the downregulation of metabolism and immune pathways as well as glutathione formation during acetaminophen-induced acute liver injury. This is the first study showing that pretreatment with LcS alleviates acetaminophen-enriched acute liver injury, and it provides a reference for the application of LcS.
Project description:This RNA-seq experiment investigates hippocampal transcriptional responses to chronic social stress in mice, aiming to uncover molecular signatures of behavioral resilience and susceptibility. Male C57BL/6J mice were subjected to a 10-day Chronic Social Defeat Stress (CSDS) protocol. At the end of the paradigm, animals were stratified into resilient (RES) and susceptible (SUS) groups using a dual behavioral index: the Social Ratio, which incorporates both interaction time and avoidance behavior in the presence of a novel CD1 aggressor. Hippocampal tissue was collected 7 hours after the final defeat session to capture transcriptional changes associated with the adaptive or maladaptive response to stress. RNA was extracted and processed for bulk RNA-seq on the Illumina platform. Analysis of differentially expressed genes revealed a marked transcriptional asymmetry in SUS mice, characterized by a widespread and selective upregulation of activity-dependent and stress-responsive genes. This dataset enables the exploration of gene expression dynamics and alternative splicing events underlying individual differences in stress adaptation.
Project description:Life stress can shorten lifespan and increase risk for aging-related diseases, but the biology underlying this phenomenon remains unclear. We assessed the effect of chronic stress on cellular senescence — a hallmark of aging. Exposure to restraint stress, a psychological non-social stress model, increased p21Cip1 exclusively in the brains of male, but not female mice, and in a p16Ink4a-independent manner. Conversely, exposure to chronic subordination stress (CSS; males only were tested) increased key senescent cell (SNC) markers in peripheral blood mononuclear cells, adipose tissue and brain, in a p16Ink4a-dependent manner. p16Ink4a-positive cells in the brain of CSS-exposed mice were primarily hippocampal and cortical neurons with evidence of DNA damage that could be reduced by p16Ink4a cell clearance. Clearance of p16Ink4a-positive cells was not sufficient to ameliorate the adverse effects of social stress on measured metrics of healthspan. Overall, our findings indicate that social stress induces an organ-specific and p16Ink4a-dependent accumulation SNCs, illuminating a fundamental way by which the social environment can contribute to aging.