Background: The pathological mechanism of cellular dysfunction and death in Huntington's disease (HD) is not well defined. Our transgenic HD sheep model (OVT73) was generated to investigate these mechanisms and for therapeutic testing. One particular cohort of animals has undergone focused investigation resulting in a large interrelated multi-omic dataset, with statistically significant changes observed comparing OVT73 and control 'omic' profiles and reported in literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anim Physiol Anim Nutr (Berl)
January 2021
Reducing crude protein and supplementation with synthetic amino acids in poultry nutrition is a recent trend to avoid wastage of protein and ammonia in production systems. Stress has been shown to impair intestinal barrier and increase inflammatory response. This study was performed on intestinal tissues of broiler chickens to understand the mechanism of stress induced by a synthetic glucocorticoid, dexamethasone (DEX) and the effect of supplementation of arginine, glutamine and glycine in reduced protein diets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe neurodegenerative disorder Huntington's disease (HD) is typically characterized by extensive loss of striatal neurons and the midlife onset of debilitating and progressive chorea, dementia, and psychological disturbance. HD is caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the () gene, translating to an elongated glutamine tract in the huntingtin protein. The pathogenic mechanism resulting in cell dysfunction and death beyond the causative mutation is not well defined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuntington's disease (HD) is a dominantly inherited, progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by a CAG repeat expansion within exon 1 of HTT, encoding huntingtin. There are no therapies that can delay the progression of this devastating disease. One feature of HD that may play a critical role in its pathogenesis is metabolic disruption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVariant late-infantile Batten disease is a neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis caused by mutations in CLN6. It is a recessive genetic lysosomal storage disease characterised by progressive neurodegeneration. It starts insidiously and leads to blindness, epilepsy and dementia in affected children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInsidious changes in behaviour herald the onset of progressive neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease (HD), sometimes years before overt symptoms are seen. Sleep and circadian disturbances are particularly disruptive symptoms in patients with neurological disorders, but they are difficult to measure in humans. Here we studied circadian behaviour in transgenic HD sheep expressing the full-length human huntingtin protein with an expanded CAG repeat mutation in the juvenile range.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Huntingtons Dis
September 2014
Background: Huntington's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder, typically with clinical manifestations in adult years, caused by an expanded polyglutamine-coding repeat in HTT. There are no treatments that delay or prevent the onset or progression of this devastating disease.
Objective And Methods: In order to study its pre-symptomatic molecular progression and provide a large mammalian model for determining natural history of the disease and for therapeutic testing, we generated and previously reported on lines of transgenic sheep carrying a full length human HTT cDNA transgene, with expression driven by a minimal HTT promoter.
Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat in the huntingtin (HTT) gene [Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group (1993) A novel gene containing a trinucleotide repeat that is expanded and unstable on Huntington's disease chromosomes. The Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group. Cell, 72, 971-983].
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe purpose of this study was to determine if the nutrition of the oocyte donor ewe influenced the success of somatic cell cloning. Merino ewes were fed at either a high- or a low-nutrition level for 3-5 mo before superovulation treatments. Freshly ovulated oocytes were enucleated and fused with serum-starved adult granulosa cells, and resulting reconstructed embryos were cultured for 6 days in modified synthetic oviduct fluid.
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