Upper airway and abdominal motor output during sneezing: is the in vivo decererate rat an adequate model?

While numerous studies have focused on identifying and characterizing the neural mechanisms mediating upper airway defense reflexes in the anesthetized or decerebrate adult cat, little is known about these behaviors in in vivo rodent models. The current study was undertaken to investigate whether the in vivo decelerate adult rat might serve as an acceptable model for studying these behaviors. To begin to address this possibility, we examined multiple respiratory motor activities in response to mechanical stimulation of the anterior nasal cavity (sufficient to elicit fictive sneezing) in in vivo decerebrate adult rats.

Burst-to-Burst variability in respiratory timing, inspiratory-phase spectral activity, and inspiratory neural network complexity in urethane-anesthetized C57BL/6 mice in vivo.

Recent work from our laboratory has focused on identifying burst-to-burst variability in temporal and spectral characteristics for 5-minute time series segments of basal inspiratory motor discharges from urethane-anesthetized adult C57BL/6 mice. The current investigation, as the continuation of our previous studies, examined short- and long-term burst-to-burst variability in temporal and spectral components as well as in complexity, which reflects the central respiratory network dynamics. All measures were assessed by quantitative poincaré plot analyses and the determination of the coefficient of variation.

Activin receptor-like kinase-7 induces apoptosis through activation of MAPKs in a Smad3-dependent mechanism in hepatoma cells.

Activin receptor-like kinase (ALK)7 is a type I serine/threonine kinase receptor of the transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta family of proteins that has similar properties to other type I receptors when activated. To see whether ALK7 can induce apoptosis as can some of the other ALK proteins, we infected the FaO rat hepatoma cell line with adenovirus expressing a constitutively active form of the ALK7. Cells infected with active ALK7 adenovirus showed an apoptotic-positive phenotype, as opposed to those that were infected with a control protein.