Curr Top Dev Biol
Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
Published: April 2022
Although certain organisms are chosen and employed to better understand a specific problem in biology (so-called model organisms), sometimes an animal model reveals its' biomedical importance by happenstance. In many ways, the advent of spiny mice (Acomys) as an emerging model to study regeneration and menstruation stands as a case study in scientific pseudoserendipity (Diaz de Chumaceiro, 1995). As we recount in this chapter, the discovery of these phenotypes, while not entirely accidental, was nonetheless unexpected. In addition to recounting how we uncovered these unusual mammalian traits, we outline recent work by our groups and others that has begun to outline the cellular and genetic mechanisms underlying bonafide mammalian tissue regeneration and a human-like mode of reproduction in spiny mice.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.ctdb.2021.12.017 | DOI Listing |
Zoology (Jena)
January 2025
Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4295, USA.
Spiny pocket mice are usually divided into two genera, Heteromys and Liomys, and more recently the latter have been subsumed into the former, leaving subfamily Heteromyinae with one genus. However, this arrangement conveys false equivalency among heteromyines, and does not represent the great morphological, molecular, and ecological diversity in this subfamily. To address this, geometric morphometric methods were used to explore interspecific cranial variation in this subfamily, which were then evaluated in the context of recent phylogenetic and taxonomic findings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroscience
January 2025
Institute for Neuroscience, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA; Waggoner Center for Alcohol & Addiction Research, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA; Department of Neuroscience, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA; Department of Neurology, Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. Electronic address:
While our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cocaine and opiate reward has historically been dopamine-focused, evidence from genetic and pharmacological approaches indicates that µ-opioid receptors (MORs) in the striatum are important contributors. Within the striatum, MORs are expressed in both dopamine D1-receptor and D2-receptor expressing GABAergic medium spiny neurons (MSNs), as well as in interneurons and various afferents. Thus, it remains unclear how these distinct MOR populations regulate drug reward.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the later stages of Parkinson's disease (PD), patients often manifest levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID), compromising their quality of life. The pathophysiology underlying LID is poorly understood, and treatment options are limited. To move toward filling this treatment gap, the intrinsic and synaptic changes in striatal spiny projection neurons (SPNs) triggered by the sustained elevation of dopamine (DA) during dyskinesia were characterized using electrophysiological, pharmacological, molecular and behavioral approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Adv
January 2025
Department of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
The pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental disorders involves vulnerable neural populations, including striatal circuitry, and convergent molecular nodes, including chromatin regulation and synapse function. Despite this, how epigenetic regulation regulates striatal development is understudied. Recurrent de novo mutations in are associated with intellectual disability and autism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElife
January 2025
Department of Neurology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, United States.
The role of striatal pathways in cognitive processing is unclear. We studied dorsomedial striatal cognitive processing during interval timing, an elementary cognitive task that requires mice to estimate intervals of several seconds and involves working memory for temporal rules as well as attention to the passage of time. We harnessed optogenetic tagging to record from striatal D2-dopamine receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons (D2-MSNs) in the indirect pathway and from D1-dopamine receptor-expressing MSNs (D1-MSNs) in the direct pathway.
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