Project description:Male Sprague-Dawley albino rats (Charles River) initially weighting approximately 200 grams were randomly assigned to one of the following: 1) olanzapine (2 mg/kg/day, I.P.) (N=20) or 2) Saline (N=20) and administered olanzapine or saline for 21 days. Frontal cortex (N=4/group) was dissected and homogenized for microarray, QPCR and western blotting following previous methods (Fatemi et al. 2003; Brooks et al. 2003). RNA isolation, cDNA preparation, microarray hybridization and QPCR followed previous methods (Brooks et al. 2003).
Project description:Purpose: Sequencing analysis of plasma cell-free RNA was performed to study the effects of space flight and microgravity environment in mice. Methods: Plasma samples were collected during the JAXA MHU-1 mission as reported previously (Shiba et al., 2017, Scientific Reports). Total RNA was purified from plasma samples and processed for sequencing analysis, to compare RNA expression profiles in ground control, space flight and artificial 1-G control groups.
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: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
