Publications by authors named "Lisanne J Van't Sant"
Background: Ageing is a complex multifactorial process, impacting all organs and tissues, with DNA damage accumulation serving as a common underlying cause. To decelerate ageing, various strategies have been applied to model organisms and evaluated for health and lifespan benefits. Dietary restriction (DR, also known as caloric restriction) is a well-established long-term intervention recognized for its universal anti-ageing effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Dietary restriction (DR) is a well-established universal anti-aging intervention, and is neuroprotective in multiple models of nervous system disease, including models with cerebellar pathology. The beneficial effects of DR are associated with a rearrangement of gene expression that modulate metabolic and cytoprotective pathways. However, the effect of DR on the cerebellar transcriptome remained to be fully defined.
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- Dietary restriction (DR) is an effective anti-aging method that helps reduce nervous system disorders and neurological decline.
- Research shows that DR protects specific brain cells, particularly cerebellar Purkinje cells, from damage caused by DNA stress and early aging.
- In mouse models with targeted DNA repair deficiencies, DR significantly decreased Purkinje cell loss, indicating it helps prevent cell death from internal DNA damage.
Leptin is an anorexigenic hormone, important in the regulation of body weight. Leptin plays a role in food reward, feeding, locomotion and anxiety. Leptin receptors (LepR) are expressed in many brain areas, including the midbrain.
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- The study investigates the use of 5-ethynyluridine (EU) for fluorescent staining of newly transcribed RNA to assess transcription changes under cellular stress in mouse models of nervous system disorders.
- The research demonstrates that EU injection into the cerebellum labels RNA in neurons and glia, with Purkinje cells showing the highest label intensity, but also leads to cytoplasmic inclusions and potential neurotoxicity over time.
- Combining EU labelling with immunohistology, the study identifies decreased transcription in Purkinje cells of disease models, providing a method to observe transcriptional changes related to nervous system diseases.
Background: Leptin reduces the motivation to obtain food by modulating activity of the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system upon presentation of cues that predict a food reward. Although leptin directly reduces the activity of ventral tegmental area (VTA) DA neurons, the majority of leptin receptor (LepR)-expressing DA neurons do not project to the nucleus accumbens, the projection implicated in driving food reward seeking. Therefore, the precise locus of leptin action to modulate motivation for a food reward is unresolved.
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