Project description:Colon cancer is the second most cancer type in Europe. Its development is highly influenced by life style factors such as nutrition and physical inactivity. Detailed biological mechanisms are so far unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of chronic wheel running on gene expression in rat colon mucosa. Therefore six-week-old male Wistar rats (exercise (EX) group, n=20) completed a stress free voluntary running exercise period of 12 weeks. Sedentary rats served as a control (CO, n=9) group. In the colon mucosa, steady-state mRNA expression levels of approximately 10,000 genes were compared between both groups by micro-array analysis (MWG rat 10k array). 8,846 mRNAs were detected above background level. Chronic exercise led to a decreased expression of 47 genes at a threshold-factor of 2.0. 3 genes were found to be up-regulated in the EX group. The identified genes encode proteins involved in signal transduction (n=11), transport (n=8), immune system (n=7), cytoskeleton (n=6), protein targeting (n=6) and metabolism (n=5). Among the genes regulated by chronic exercise, the betaine-homocysteine methyltransferase 2 (BHMT2) seems to be of particular interest. Physical activity may protect against aberrant methylation by repressing the BHMT2 gene and thus contribute to a decreased risk of developing colon cancer. In summary, our experiment presents the first gene expression pattern in rat colon mucosa following chronic wheel running and therefore represents an important step in understanding the molecular mechanisms responsible for the preventive effect of physical activity on the development of colon cancer. Keywords: voluntary running exercise, animal model
Project description:Male Sprague-Dawley rats were used to establish exhausted-exercise model by motorized rodent treadmill. Yu-Ping-Feng-San at doses of 2.18 g/kg was administrated by gavage before exercise training for 10 consecutive days. Quantitative proteomics was performed for assessing the related mechanism of Yu-Ping-Feng-San.
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:Effects of voluntary exercise in rat aorta. Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) performed 5 weeks of voluntary exercise (wheel-cage running). Aortic tissue was collected and samples were pooled (3 aortae/chip). Aortae from running rats were compared to aortae from non-running rats. Keywords: parallel sample
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.
Project description:Effects of voluntary exercise in rat aorta. Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) performed 5 weeks of voluntary exercise (wheel-cage running). Aortic tissue was collected and samples were pooled (3 aortae/chip). Aortae from running rats were compared to aortae from non-running rats.