Project description:Gene expression analysis of motor cortex after spinal C3 lesion Dorsal column wire knife lesions: Adult female Fischer 344 rats weighing 150-200 gm were used. Animals underwent a laminectomy at spinal level C3. Dorsal funiculus lesions were made in the middle of C3 using a Kopf microwire device (Kopf Instruments, Tujunga, CA). After fixation in a spinal stereotaxic unit, a small dural incision was made. The wire knife was lowered into the spinal cord to a depth of 1.1 mm ventral to the dorsal cord surface and 1.1 mm to the left of the midline. The tip of the wireknife was extruded, forming a 2.25 mm-wide arc that was raised to the dorsal surface of the cord. To ensure complete axotomy of the dorsal funiculus, spinal tissue was compressed against the microwire knife surface using a microaspiration pipette until all visible white matter was transected. Cortical microdissection: The forelimb and hindlimb motor cortex were microdisected from rat cortices: Rostral to Bregma: an area from 2.0 to 4.5 mm mediolateral and from 0 to 2 mm anterior-posterior Caudal to Bregma: an area from 2.0 to 3.5 mediolateral and from 0 to 3 mm caudal to Bregma. Only the inferior half of the cortex containing layer V corticospinal motor neurons was sampled in each region.
Project description:High-frequency stimulation of the ventrolateral thalamus regulates gene expression in hippocampus, motor cortex and caudate-putamen
Project description:Inflammation is a key component of pathological angiogenesis. Here we induce cornea neovascularisation using sutures placed into the cornea, and sutures are removed to induce a regression phase. We used whole transcriptome microarray to monitor gene expression profies of several genes
Project description:Knee osteoarthritis (KOA), as a degenerative multifactorial disease, affects the quality of life and mental health of patients, and also brings a huge socioeconomic burden. Treating synovitis have shown promise as anti-inflammatory therapeutics in mitigating OA symptoms and disease progression. Here, by analysing synovial single-cell sequencing (scRNA-seq) data from KOA, we found that synovial fibroblasts (FLS) in OA synovium showed a distinct pro-inflammatory phenotype. We collected synovial tissue from patients with clinical OA as well as from healthy donors, and histological examination was consistent with findings in scRNA-seq. Inspired by recent cross-tissue fibroblast lineage studies, we identified by sequencing that healthy FLS in synovial tissues share transcriptome-level similarities with dermal fibroblasts (DFb). Subsequently, we revealed the local as well as systemic distribution of intra-articular injected DFbs by constructing/extracting two types of rat fibroblasts (luciferase DFbs as well as GFP DFbs). The results demonstrate that DFbs can be locally retained in the synovium for up to three weeks following targeted engrafting on it. And intra-articular injection does not result in DFbs migration to vital organs or the occurrence of histological changes in these organs. A rat model of KOA was constructed by anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) in order to study the therapeutic effect of DFbs on KOA. After injection, the rats showed improvement in painful gait. In addition, histological as well as imaging results showed reduced synovitis and improvement in articular cartilage. Finally we verified the protective effect of DFbs on cytokine-stimulated chondrocytes in a co-culture system.