Project description:As an attempt to assess physio-psychological effects elicited in odorant-inhaled rats, gene expression profiling in the central nervous system was carried out with rats housed under stressful conditions. (R)-(-)-linalool inhalation to rats during 2 h restraint significantly up-regulated the expression of genes in hypothalamus, which were found to be related to neuron differentiation and regulation of transcription as well as immediate early genes. The expressions of 104 among focused stress-regulated genes were significantly altered by the inhalation. The (R)-(-)-linalool inhalation significantly repressed the restraint-induced changes in the expression levels of 77 of the 104. It also promoted the expression of the remaining 27 genes including those related to anti-apoptotic heat shock proteins. The differences in their hypothalamic gene expressions revealed that the inhaled odorants actually influenced stress responses, based on the restraint-induced hypothalamic gene expressions related to apoptosis. These results indicate that the analysis of gene expression profiles in rats subjected to a stressful condition is useful to evaluate odorant-induced effects as shown by the particular results that (R)-(-)-linalool inhalation under only 2 h restraint- stressed condition induces neuron differentiation against apoptosis.
Project description:To uncover molecular mechanisms underlying reduction of responses to restraint stress by racemic (R,S)-linalool inhalation, gene expression profiling at the hypothalamus of restraint stressed rats exposed to racemic (R,S)-linalool was carried out. Inhaled (R,S)-linalool returned the expression of 560 stress-induced probe sets to a normal status. These genes were associated with synaptic transmission via neurotransmitters including anxiolytic neuropeptides such as oxytocin and neuropeptide Y, and also included a number of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I necessary for neural development and plasticity. These results reveal some of the molecular mechanisms for odor inhalation under stress condition at the hypothalamus.
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:Formaldehyde (HCHO) is the simplest form of aldehyde and it is naturally present in a wide range of resources. In spite of its cosmopolitan presence, formaldehyde can have deleterious health effects at higher concentrations like leukemia. However, most of the studies carried out so far have focused on the effect of formaldehyde exposure through inhalation and not much has been studied on the its exposure through food. In this context, the present study was carried out to investigate the effect of formaldehyde exposure through drinking water on the liver proteome of rat which would not only be helpful in assessing the impact of formaldehyde on health of organisms but also would be helpful in understanding the mechanism of detoxification.