Project description:Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) is an ideal animal model for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease/nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NAFLD/NASH) which is under development. Currently, the research and application of Mongolian gerbils have been largely limited due to the lack of genomic and transcriptome information. In the present study, we sought to better understand the underlying mechanism of the rapid development of NASH in high-fat diet (HFD)-fed Mongolian gerbils by analyzing the transcriptome profilings of different modeling times. Eight hub genes CD44, APP, CDC42, CD68, CXCR4, CSF1R, ADGRE1 and FERMT3 were obtained, which are all involved in inflammation response and CDC42 and FERMT3 are associated with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Most of the hub genes showed high expression levels in the first stage of modeling-building (HFD for 4 weeks). We observed that feeding HFD for 4 weeks is sufficient to induce high expression of pro-fibrotic factors such as PDGFB and CTGF and to form collagen deposits. Intriguingly, we found four significant independent prognostic factors for HCC: GPC1, ARPC1B, DAB2 and CFL exhibiting high expression levels during the modeling time. Our findings indicated that, Mongolian gerbil is an ideal NAFLD model with rapid progression in inflammation and fibrosis. Prolonging the modeling time may lead to the formation of NAFLD-related HCC and further research is needed to investigate this possibility.

2022-02-23 | GSE157169 | GEO

Exploring binaural hearing in gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) using virtual headphones.

Project description:The Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) has become a key species in investigations of the neural processing of sound localization cues in mammals. While its sound localization has been tested extensively under free-field stimulation, many neurophysiological studies use headphones to present signals with binaural localization cues. The gerbil's behavioral sensitivity to binaural cues, however, is unknown for the lack of appropriate stimulation paradigms in awake behaving gerbils. We close this gap in knowledge by mimicking a headphone stimulation; we use free-field loudspeakers and apply cross-talk cancellation techniques to present pure tones with binaural cues via "virtual headphones" to gerbils trained in a sound localization task. All gerbils were able to lateralize sounds depending on the interaural time or level difference (ITD and ILD, respectively). For ITD stimuli, reliable responses were seen for frequencies ≤2.9 kHz, the highest frequency tested with ITD stimuli. ITD sensitivity was frequency-dependent with the highest sensitivity observed at 1 kHz. For stimuli with ITD outside the gerbil's physiological range, responses were cyclic indicating the use of phase information when lateralizing narrow-band sounds. For ILD stimuli, reliable responses were obtained for frequencies ≥2 kHz. The comparison of ITD and ILD thresholds with ITD and ILD thresholds derived from gerbils' free-field performance suggests that ongoing ITD information is the main cue for sound localization at frequencies <2 kHz. At 2 kHz, ITD and ILD cues are likely used in a complementary way. Verification of the use of the virtual headphones suggests that they can serve as a suitable substitute for conventional headphones particularly at frequencies ≤2 kHz.

| S-EPMC5386270 | biostudies-literature

Meriones unguiculatus strain:MG1

Project description:Meriones unguiculatus strain:MG1 Genome sequencing

| PRJNA431024 | ENA