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Medicine and Health Sciences

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Selected Works

2012

Animals

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Lipopolysaccharide Induces And Activates The Nalp3 Inflammasome In The Liver, Michal Ganz, Timea Csak, Bharath D. Nath, Gyongyi Szabo Oct 2012

Lipopolysaccharide Induces And Activates The Nalp3 Inflammasome In The Liver, Michal Ganz, Timea Csak, Bharath D. Nath, Gyongyi Szabo

Gyongyi Szabo

AIM: To examine the activation of the Nalp3 inflammasome and its downstream targets following lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced stimulation in the liver. METHODS: Six-to-eight-week-old C57BL/6 chow fed mice were injected intraperitoneally with 0.5 mug/g bodyweight LPS and sacrificed 2, 4, 6, 18 or 24 h later. LPS-induced liver damage was confirmed by a biochemical assay to detect alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels. To determine if LPS stimulation in the liver led to activation of the inflammasome, real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to evaluate the mRNA expression of components of the Nalp3 inflammasome. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were used to determine the protein …


Human Lens Lipids Differ Markedly From Those Of Commonly Used Experimental Animals, Jane Deeley, Todd W. Mitchell, Xiaojia Wei, Jurgen Korth, Jessica Hughes, Stephen J. Blanksby, Roger J. Truscott Oct 2012

Human Lens Lipids Differ Markedly From Those Of Commonly Used Experimental Animals, Jane Deeley, Todd W. Mitchell, Xiaojia Wei, Jurgen Korth, Jessica Hughes, Stephen J. Blanksby, Roger J. Truscott

Stephen Blanksby

Electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry has allowed the unambiguous identification andquantification of individual lens phospholipids in human and six animal models. Using this approach ca. 100unique phospholipids have been characterised. Parallel analysis of the same lens extracts by a novel directinsertionelectron-ionization technique found the cholesterol content of human lenses to be significantlyhigher (ca. 6 times) than lenses from the other animals.The most abundant phospholipids in all the lenses examined were choline-containing phospholipids. In rat,mouse, sheep, cow, pig and chicken, thesewere present largely as phosphatidylcholines, in contrast 66% of thetotal phospholipid in Homo sapienswas sphingomyelin, with the most abundant being dihydrosphingomyelins,in …


Rapid Inversion: Running Animals And Robots Swing Like A Pendulum Under Ledges, Jean-Michel Mongeau, Brian Mcrae, Ardian Jusufi, Paul Birkmeyer, Aaron M. Hoover, Ronald Fearing, Robert J. Full Jul 2012

Rapid Inversion: Running Animals And Robots Swing Like A Pendulum Under Ledges, Jean-Michel Mongeau, Brian Mcrae, Ardian Jusufi, Paul Birkmeyer, Aaron M. Hoover, Ronald Fearing, Robert J. Full

Aaron M. Hoover

Escaping from predators often demands that animals rapidly negotiate complex environments. The smallest animals attain relatively fast speeds with high frequency leg cycling, wing flapping or body undulations, but absolute speeds are slow compared to larger animals. Instead, small animals benefit from the advantages of enhanced maneuverability in part due to scaling. Here, we report a novel behavior in small, legged runners that may facilitate their escape by disappearance from predators. We video recorded cockroaches and geckos rapidly running up an incline toward a ledge, digitized their motion and created a simple model to generalize the behavior. Both species ran …