rat in Biological News

Limping rat provides sciatica insights

DURHAM, N.C. -- A newly developed animal model for the painful nerve condition known as sciatica should help researchers diagnose and treat it, according to Duke University bioengineers and surgeons. Sciatica is not a single disorder, but rather a diverse range of symptoms, such as numbness or ...

African thicket rat malaria linked to virulent human form

Even though the most deadly form of malaria for humans, Plasmodium falciparum , has been linked to malaria found in chimpanzees, this group has been fairly isolated on the malarial family treeuntil now. A new phylogenetic analysis from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the America...

Dwarf cloud rat rediscovered after 112 years

CHICAGO-A team of Filipino and American scientists have rediscovered a highly distinctive mammal C a greater dwarf cloud rat C that was last seen 112 years ago. Furthermore, it has never before been discovered in its natural habitat and was thought by some to be extinct. The greater dwarf cloud ...

A new kind of rat model

Two neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) are working with local company PhysioGenix to investigate a novel animal model the company has developed for researching diseases like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and ADHD. The models are genetically altered rats, origin...

Human derived stem cells can repair rat hearts damaged by heart attack

When human heart muscle cells derived from embryonic stem cells are implanted into a rat after a heart attack, they can help rebuild the animal's heart muscle and improve function of the organ, scientists report in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology. The researchers also developed a new p...

Dopamine drug leads to new neurons and recovery of function in rat model of Parkinson's

In preliminary results, researchers have shown that a drug which mimics the effects of the nerve-signaling chemical dopamine causes new neurons to develop in the part of the brain where cells are lost in Parkinson's disease (PD). The drug also led to long-lasting recovery of function in an animal m...

Building memories with actin

...supporting actin cytoskeleton. However, researchers didn't know what controlled these changes. Rex et al. tackled the question by dosing slices of rat hippocampus with adenosine, a naturally occurring signal that squelches LTP. Adenosine prevents phosphorylation and inactivation of cofilin, an inhibi...

International collaboration by scientists culminates in novel ion channels database

... resource drawing together peer reviewed information about pharmacological, chemical, genetic, functional and patho-physiological properties of human, rat and mouse genes encoding in excess of 354 non sensory G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) including orphan receptors, 71 LGIC and 141 VGIC subunits. ...

American Chemical Society weekly presspac -- June 10, 2009

...th early disease who could be treated in ways that could slow its progression. ARTICLE #2 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE "Sniffing Chronic Renal Failure in rat Model by an Array of Random Networks of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes" DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/f...

Horse whisperers, lion tamers not needed: Scientists find genetic regions that soothe savage beasts

...tists mated the tame with the aggressive rats and identified regions in the rat genome that cause a rat to be tamer or more aggressive. "For thousands of years, humans have dom...

Cantabrian cornice has experienced seven cooling and warming phases over past 41,000 years

...by other authors on data relating to pollen, marine isotope stratigraphy, and materials deposited by glaciers backs this up this result. The water rat was king of the Late Pleistocene According to the study, there were four unstable cold periods, two more stable ones, and a temperate climatic pe...

Protein linked to mental retardation controls synapse maturation, plasticity, CSHL team finds

...sturbed under carefully controlled conditions. Using samples taken from the rat hippocampus -- a well-studied brain region known to be important in learnin...l glutamatergic function, specifically observed in these experiments in the rat hippocampus, can in this way be associated with certain pathologies. The...

American Chemical Society's weekly PressPac -- May 27, 2009

...s designed 10 chemically synthesized substances, termed siRNAs, with the ability to block or "silence" the TGF-beta 1 gene in the liver. When put into rat liver cells, the "gene silencers" decreased levels of type 1 collagen whose excessive production leads to fibrosis, as well as two other substances kn...

Liver disease 'shrunk' by blood-pressure drug

...oblast to stay alive and proliferate. It is this pathway that then causes scar tissue to accumulate, creating the liver damage. Work carried out in rat and mouse models allowed the researchers to study what was happening inside the liver when losartan, an angiotensin II receptor antagonist drug, was p...

Caltech scientists reveal how neuronal activity is timed in brain's memory-making circuits

...d, you have additional information about where the rat was in space." When the data about neuronal firing, oscillation phase, and rat location were combined, the researchers were able ...n of how spatial information is represented in the rat brain," notes Lubenov. "It was believed that the f...

NIH funds work at WPI on regenerating heart tissue and preventing urinary tract infections

...p processes for maximizing the number of hMSCs that can be loaded onto the threads, and then to study the effect of the cells on cardiac function in a rat model. ...

NAU discovery could help feed millions

...treatment into bait. The bait is put into strategically placed stations that lure rodents into cages too small to attract or affect other animals. "No rat or mice I know can resist a little hole," she said. ContraPest is being tested in Indonesia -- the largest producer of rice in the world, and is c...

City rats loyal to their 'hoods, scientists discover

... In the rat race of life, one thing is certain: there's no pla...known as Jones Falls. Within these hemispheres, rat families form smaller communities of about 11 city...--perhaps by targeting entire families at once. rat race won. ...

Capturing the birth of a synapse

...cule involved in the work were previously linked to autism. The discovery -- captured with fluorescent imaging of excitatory neurons harvested from rat pups shortly after birth and studied in culture as they continued to develop -- is described in a paper placed online May 18 ahead of formal publicati...

100 reasons to change the way we think about genetics

...n chemicals, at least 13 generations of their descendants are born with bristly outgrowths on their eyes. Another study found that exposing a pregnant rat to a chemical that alters reproductive hormones leads to generations of sick offspring. Yet another study shows higher rates of heart disease and diab...

Neuroscientists discover long-term potentiation in the olfactory bulb

..., the part of the brain that processes the sense of smell. Their study, entitled "Long-term plasticity of excitatory inputs to granule cells in the rat olfactory bulb" will be published in the June 2009 issue of Nature Neuroscience and is currently available online. In the 1970s, scientists disco...

New mediator of smoking recruits

...n-smokers produced no osteopontin. Osteopontin expression could be stimulated directly by nicotine treatment. In addition, expressing osteopontin in rat lung resulted in recruitment of immune cells, resulting in symptoms similar to smoking-related interstitial lung diseases. These results indicate tha...

Grouping muscles to make controlling limbs easier

...scles and stimulate them. We can use this synergies approach to make controlling a limb simpler." Next Tresch will perform similar research using a rat model, and he is currently working with other professors at Northwestern to bring the research to patients. "The end goal is to restore movement i...

Poison: It's what's for dinner

...agues used microarrays designed to scan laboratory rat genes a glass slide containing tiny fragments of ...er. The microarrays, with pieces of 40,000 lab rat genes, included 224 biotransformation or detoxific...identified in lab rats. Dearing decided to try lab rat microarrays on closely related packrats. "We n...

Early isolation linked to enhanced response to cocaine

... pregnant mother alone), (2) as neonates (by isolating newborn rats for 1 hr daily during the first 9 days of life) or as adolescents (by housing each rat separately during days 21-35). Two additional groups: (4) isolated as fetuses, neonates and adolescents and (5) controls - not isolated during any de...

Early isolation linked to enhanced response to cocaine

... pregnant mother alone), (2) as neonates (by isolating newborn rats for 1 hr daily during the first 9 days of life) or as adolescents (by housing each rat separately during days 21-35). Two additional groups: (4) isolated as fetuses, neonates and adolescents and (5) controls - not isolated during any de...

New nucleotide could revolutionize epigenetics

...se organs, tissues and systems of the body. Recent research has shown, however, that environmental factors and experiences, such as the type of care a rat pup receives from its mother, can also result in methylation patterns and corresponding behaviors that are heritable for several generations. Thousand...

HIV dearms protective protein in cells

...is strategy of the human HIV is not effective in a rat model for AIDS. The protective protein in rats is ... model as in humans one limitation of the current rat model. However, this new knowledge may enable an i...nce the Heidelberg virologists discovered that in rat cells, Vpu has no effect on CD317. "HIV is adapted...

Poison: It's what's for dinner

...agues used microarrays designed to scan laboratory rat genes a glass slide containing tiny fragments of ...er. The microarrays, with pieces of 40,000 lab rat genes, included 224 biotransformation or detoxific...identified in lab rats. Dearing decided to try lab rat microarrays on closely related packrats. "We n...

New and unexpected mechanism identified how the brain responds to stress

...respond to stress at the cellular level in the brain. Being able to quickly and successfully respond to stress is essential for survival. Using a rat model, Jaideep Bains, PhD, a University of Calgary scientist and his team of researchers at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute have discovered that neurons...

Understanding natural crop defenses

...posed to far-red radiation, the light signal plants use to detect the proximity of neighbors. Like many commercially grown crops, Arabidopsis the lab rat of plant biologists doesn't tolerate shade well. But it was more than a matter of limited resources. Mutated Arabidopsis seedlings that no longer ...

UC Davis research shows that newly discovered drug reduces heart enlargement

...of Entomology, showed that the new class of drugs reduces heart swelling in rat models with heart failure. "This holds promise to treat heart failure ...in the Chiamvimonvat and Hammock laboratories for a year. "The study of rat models showed that heart failure is driven by high angiotensin associated w...

Researchers may have found why women have an edge on salt-sensitive hypertension

...ion without increasing blood pressure. Researchers found this by studying a rat missing the ETB receptor. When they gave the animals the protein endothelin...dings indicate that actually may depend on whether you are a male or female rat and point to the need for human studies, he adds. MCG researchers plan ...

Stress disrupts human thinking, but the brain can bounce back

...rmance had returned to normal along with their brains. The uncanny similarities surprised even the researchers. "I certainly don't want to say that rat brains are just like human brains," Liston says. "But it does show that you can use research in animal models to help interpret human neuroimaging res...

Novel technique changes lymph node biopsy, reduces radiation exposure

...pointment in chemistry in Arts & Sciences, both at Washington University in St. Louis, have used gold nanocages to map sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) in a rat noninvasively using PAT. Wang's lab is the largest PAT lab in the world credited with the invention of super-depth photoacoustic microscopy, and Xia's...

Novel technique changes lymph node biopsy, reduces radiaiton exposure

...pointment in chemistry in Arts & Sciences, both at Washington University in St. Louis, have used gold nanocages to map sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) in a rat noninvasively using PAT. Wang's lab is the largest PAT lab in the world credited with the invention of super-depth photoacoustic microscopy, and Xia's...

Recipe for capturing authentic embryonic stem cells may apply to any mammal, study suggests

...olate embryonic stem cells from rats. Authentic rat embryonic stem cells had never before been establi...se activate the differentiation process, maintains rat embryonic stem cells in their natural default stat...Ying's group wrote. "Now, the availability of true rat embryonic stem cells provides an opportunity to ad...

Over 1,000 species discovered in the Greater Mekong in past decade

... WASHINGTON, DC, December 15, 2008 -- A rat thought extinct for 11 million years and a hot-pink, cyanide-producing dragon millipede are among a thousand new species discovered in the Greater Mek...

Rare disease provides clues about enzyme role in arrhythmias

... showed that inhibiting this enzyme prevented irregular heartbeats in adult rat heart cells engineered to express the Timothy syndrome disease gene," said ...hat helps drive heartbeats. "By studying this mutant channel in an adult rat heart cell that had all the proteins and machinery of a normal heart cell, ...

Mammals can be stimulated to regrow damaged inner retina nerve cells

...d nerve cells. Compared to birds, the scientist said, mammals have an even more limited Mller glia cell response to injury. In an injured mouse or rat retina, the cells may react and become larger, but few start dividing again. Because the Mller glia cells appeared to have the potential to regrow...