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.
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:A series of two color gene expression profiles obtained using Agilent 44K expression microarrays was used to examine sex-dependent and growth hormone-dependent differences in gene expression in rat liver. This series is comprised of pools of RNA prepared from untreated male and female rat liver, hypophysectomized (‘Hypox’) male and female rat liver, and from livers of Hypox male rats treated with either a single injection of growth hormone and then killed 30, 60, or 90 min later, or from livers of Hypox male rats treated with two growth hormone injections spaced 3 or 4 hr apart and killed 30 min after the second injection. The pools were paired to generate the following 6 direct microarray comparisons: 1) untreated male liver vs. untreated female liver; 2) Hypox male liver vs. untreated male liver; 3) Hypox female liver vs. untreated female liver; 4) Hypox male liver vs. Hypox female liver; 5) Hypox male liver + 1 growth hormone injection vs. Hypox male liver; and 6) Hypox male liver + 2 growth hormone injections vs. Hypox male liver. A comparison of untreated male liver and untreated female liver liver gene expression profiles showed that of the genes that showed significant expression differences in at least one of the 6 data sets, 25% were sex-specific. Moreover, sex specificity was lost for 88% of the male-specific genes and 94% of the female-specific genes following hypophysectomy. 25-31% of the sex-specific genes whose expression is altered by hypophysectomy responded to short-term growth hormone treatment in hypox male liver. 18-19% of the sex-specific genes whose expression decreased following hypophysectomy were up-regulated after either one or two growth hormone injections. Finally, growth hormone suppressed 24-36% of the sex-specific genes whose expression was up-regulated following hypophysectomy, indicating that growth hormone acts via both positive and negative regulatory mechanisms to establish and maintain the sex specificity of liver gene expression. For full details, see V. Wauthier and D.J. Waxman, Molecular Endocrinology (2008)
Project description:LEC rats are considered as interesting model for studying hepatitis and development of hepatocarcinogenesis related to copper accumulation and oxidative stress. LEC rats have a mutation in a gene related to liver copper excretion, the Atp7b gene. As a consequence, this rat strain shows an abnormal copper accumulation in the liver. This is believed to be the origin of the acute hepatitis and the subsequent hepatocellular carcinoma that spontaneously develop in these rats. Here, we present the gene expression profiles of LEC rats at different disease stages. LEC rats were classified as normal 6 weeks old (6w), normal 9 weeks old (9w), slight jaundice and jaundice according to age and disease state. D-penicillamine, a copper chelator agent, blocks both hepatitis and tumor development. D-penicillamine-trated LEC rats were used as control rats for gene expression comparison as they showed neither hepatitis development nor tumor marker expression. Gene expression differences in protein metabolism and tumor marker proteins add to the known oxidative stress and inflammation characterization of the hepatitis process, leading to new insights concerning hepatitis and hepatocarcinogenesis development. Keywords: disease state analysis 6 weeks old LEC rats, 6 rats per group, were sacrified at different hepatitis stages. Biochemical and histological analyses were performed in order to classify the rats into normal, slight jaundice or jaundice groups. D-penicillamine-treated LEC rats (100 mg/kg/day p.o.) were used as control rats since they behave as normal rats. Microarray analysis was performed on liver samples, one replicate per rat, using dyes swap.
Project description:The effect of vitamin D supplementation on tumorigenesis in a thioacetamide (TAA)-induced rat intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma model