Scientists discover odd-ball rodent
...in Southeast Asia have discovered a long-whiskered rodent with stubby legs and a tail covered in dense hair. But don't call it a squirrel. Or a rat. Because it's actually more like a guinea pig or chinchilla. But not quite. In fact the new species, found in Laos by scientists from the Wildlife Conserva...Cigarette smoke exacerbates alcohol's effects on defense against Streptococcus pneumoniae
...pulmonary infections caused by S. pneumoniae . A rodent study in the May issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research has found that alcohol consumption increases movement of S. pneumoniae toward the lungs, and that smoke exposure exacerbates the alcohol-induced increase in bacterial penetrat...MMP inhibitors may offer hope in the fight against prostate cancer-induced bone disease
...Lynn Matrisian of Vanderbilt University used a new rodent model that mimics the changes to bone that occur following prostate cancer metastasis. Transplantation of prostate tumor tissue onto bone surfaces provided a histological picture similar to human prostate cancers growing in the bone. The goal of the ...To stop evolution: New way of fighting antibiotic resistance demonstrated by Scripps scientists
... The effect in vivo was dramatic. Blocking LexA in rodent models of E. coli infections halted the growth of antibiotic resistance. Three days after being subjected to antibiotics, the rodents showed no level of resistance to rifampicin or ciprofloxin, when they harbored a variant of LexA that was catalytica...Junk DNA shapes social behavior
...e affects social behavior in male prairie voles, a rodent species. Previous studies, including Dr. Young's gene-manipulation study reported in Nature's June 17, 2004, issue, have shown the vasopressin receptor gene regulates social behaviors in many species. The researchers bred two groups of prairie voles ...For first time, brain cells generated in a dish
... McKnight Brain Institute have created a system in rodent models that for the first time duplicates neurogenesis -- the process of generating new brain cells -- in a dish. Writing in today's (June 13) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe a cell culture method that holds the...Experimental vaccine protects nonhuman primates from Lassa fever
...able to halt the spread of Lassa fever, other than rodent control in affected areas. The disease is transmitted to humans from rodents that carry the virus. Lassa fever is common in parts of West Africa where it causes a significant amount of death and disability among the population. Recently, Lassa fever ...Study in Royal Society journal on world's only horned rodent
...d to the living sewellel, is the only known horned rodent and the smallest horned mammal. The ancestors of Ceratogaulus evolved a burrowing lifestyle, but a rigorous test of adaptation reveals that the horns in this animal were not evolved for digging. The pattern of evolution and the biomechanics of the ...Why do aneurysms form? New studies suggest leading role for white blood cells
...ocess. The researchers exposed a small part of the rodent aortas to a chemical that breaks down blood vessel tissue, then studied what happened in the rodents that had altered neutrophil systems and in comparison rodents that were normal. In both cases, says senior author and U-M vascular surgeon Gilbert U...The body's biological clock: alcohol may lead to physiological anarchy
...a majority of these studies have been performed in rodent models observations of humans correlate with the animal studies and imply that similar types of pathology are associated with alcohol intake." Some of the review's key findings were: The chronobiological disruptions observed in human alcoholics a...U-Iowa researchers will use grant to study fetal alcohol syndrome
...r the current study. The first one to two weeks of rodent life are equivalent to the third trimester of human gestation. "The third trimester of a human pregnancy is when the fetal brain growth spurt takes place, thus alcohol is particularly damaging in the brain at that time," Karaay said. "However, the b...Caloric restriction won't dramatically extend life span in humans: UCLA research
..., citing a finding from his dissertation. A normal rodent reaches maturity at one month of age, and begins reproducing its body weight in offspring every month and a half. If humans shut off reproduction by severely limiting calories, "our reduction in wear and tear on the body is minimal," he said. The rod...Flipped, expelled, copied, and shrunk
...ing that the WBS region has remained static in the rodent lineage since the divergence of rodents and primates approximately 80 million years ago. In contrast, when comparing the WBS region among various primates (Japanese and Rhesus macaque, olive and hamadryas baboon, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, and...Hurricane aftermath: Infectious disease threats from common, not exotic, diseases
...may be caused by exposure to water contaminated by rodent urine and can be treated successfully with antibiotics. Over the long term, mold may also pose a threat. Mold growth is an indicator of excess moisture, and much will need to be done to dry out New Orleans and clean up mold growth. Some environm...Understanding IGF-1: Jefferson researcher sees drug potential in targeting enzyme
... grew, but would not turn cancerous when placed in rodent cells with added cancer-causing genes. The finding suggested that if cells that lacked IGF-1 receptor could not be turned cancerous, perhaps cancerous cells with IGF-1 could be reversed. "If this is true in humans, then this is a rational target," ...JCI table of contents November, 2005
...ana Novobrantseva and colleagues from Biogen use a rodent model of hepatic fibrosis to show, for the first time, that B cell deficient mice have attenuated fibrosis in response to chemically induced hepatic tissue injury. This work provides evidence that a component of the adaptive immune system is involved...JCI table of contents: December 2005
...nduction level at 3 hours of reperfusion injury in rodent kidneys subjected to ischemia/reperfusion. The predominant sites of expression of TSP-1 are the injured proximal tubules, where TSP-1 colocalizes with activated caspase-3. Cultured kidney cells exposed to TSP-1 also demonstrated signs of programmed ...Olfactory nerve cells expressing same receptor display a varied set of reactions
...ends on about 1000 different odor receptors in the rodent nose. Different sets of receptors respond to different sets of odors. To date, no one has been able to record electrical impulses from a specific subtype of olfactory sensory neuron expressing a known receptor. This is important, says Ma, because pri...Engineered mouse mimics cognitive aspects of schizophrenia
...or delusions are impossible to address. "However, rodent models have the advantage of allowing direct tests of cause-effect relationships for specific aspects of the disease, such as some of the cognitive deficits," they concluded. "We here have been able to introduce genetically a single molecular alterat...Engineering nerve jumper cables for spinal cord repair in animal model
...Pennsylvania School of Medicine have created in a rodent model a completely new way to engineer nerve structures, or constructs, in culture. This proof-of-principle research has implications for eventually becoming a new method to repair spinal cord injury in humans. The work appears in the latest issue o...