Project description:Evaluation of early transcriptional changes in blood brain barrier genes involved in the patogenesis of brain edema associated with ALF. Two different well stablished rat models were analyzed: Portacaval anastomosis plus hepatic artery ligation and portacaval anastomosis plus total hepatectomy. ALF was induced by portocaval anastomosis (PCA) and 24 hours after the surgery animals underwent hepatic artery ligation (HAL) or total hepatectomy (HEP). Sham rats were subjected to a fictitious two-step surgery. Between 8 and 12 hours after the last surgery rats were euthanized by decapitation, to avoid anesthetic effects, and cortical microvessels isolated.
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.
Project description:A filtration method followed by microarray analyses allows PDE components to be identified in brain microvessels, and confirmed that PDE4D and PDE5A are the primary forms expressed in rat brain microvessels. Adult male F344 rats were sacrificed and blocks of the cerebral cortex and infratentorial areas were dissected. Microvessels were isolated using a filtration method, and total RNA was extracted. Two microarrays using four sample RNAs (microvessels from the cerebral cortex vs. microvessels from the infratentorial block) were included in the present study. Microarrays demonstrated that there were 16 PDE transcripts in the PDE superfamily, exhibiting quantifiable density in the microvessels.
Project description:In order to establish a rat embryonic stem cell transcriptome, mRNA from rESC cell line DAc8, the first male germline competent rat ESC line to be described and the first to be used to generate a knockout rat model was characterized using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis.