Abnormalities in the synaptic concentration of serotonin are often linked to clinical and psychiatric disorders. This concentration of serotonin is regulated, by serotonergic neurons, through a cycle of serotonin synthesis and vesicular packaging,...
Acetaminophen is extensively used as an analgesic and antipyretic agent, but at high doses it causes liver damage. The major metabolic pathways of acetaminophen are glucuronidation and sulfation. In addition to these pathways, acetaminophen...
Ahearn et al. (J. Heredity 93:210-213) have previously shown that the rat fuzzy and Charles River "hairless" mutations are defects in the same gene on rat Chromosome 1, and are likely orthologues of mouse frizzy (abbreviated fr) on mouse Chromosome...
Animal models of Huntington's disease (HD) that utilize 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NPA) in the initiation of oxidative stress
and accelerated brain-aging have been extensively studied. When administered to rodents, 3-NPA irreversibly...
Comfrey is an herb traditionally used for bone healing. It is also sold as a dietary supplement to promote respiratory health. Comfrey has been banned in Canada and Germany because of its link to liver damage or failure, but remains legal in the...
Rats lacking normal hairy coats were discovered several years ago among our colony of hairy albino rats. The trait was found to be controlled by a recessive allele of a gene we designated shorn (shn), which mapped to distal end of rat chromosome 7....
The pairing and recombination of homologous regions of the X and Y chromosomes, in an area known as the pseudoautosomal region (PAR), has been a phenomenon of interest since its discovery in 1934. Its presence seems to be limited to eutherian...
Transforming growth factor-alpha (TGFa), a member of the endothelial growth
factor (EGF) family of mitogens, was previously thought to exist solely in neoplastic
cells and the quickly dividing cells of a developing fetus. Since then, TGFa...