Wistar rats were fed ad libitum with either standard chow throughout pregnancy (25% protein, 57% carbohydrate, n = 6) or an isocaloric, low protein, high carbohydrate diet (LPHC, 8% protein, 81% carbohydrate)

for different periods of pregnancy (early, 0-10 days, n = 6; late, 10-20 days, n = 7; throughout, 0-20 days, n = 6) before tissue collection at day 20. The LPHC diet had no effect on fetal or placental. weights, or on fetal Tariquidar inhibitor hepatic activities of G6Pase and PEPCK in the early LPHC group. In contrast, fetuses of dams fed the LPHC diet in late or throughout pregnancy had lower body and placental weights, and higher hepatic G6Pase and PEPCK activities than controls. Maternal hepatic G6Pase activity was elevated in ail LPHC groups, while maternal PEPCK activity was only increased significantly

in the late LPHC group.

Conclusions: Feeding a LPHC diet, particularly during late pregnancy, therefore, up-regulates fetal and maternal. hepatic glucogenic capacity. Crown Copyright (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.”
“Background: The global molecular changes in cardiac tissue during congestive heart failure (CHF) have not been fully examined. Transcriptome analysis with the use of next-generation sequencers is a useful tool for elucidating the pathogenesis of CHF. Although there are some advantages in a dog CHF model, transcriptome analyses in dogs are CCI-779 limited by the relative lack of genomic information.

Methods and Results: The transcriptome analysis of hearts from dogs with CHF

was conducted with the use of a genome analyzer and the Casava software. The mRNA sequence reads showed alignments with similar to 800 of 1,019 genes from the dog reference database. On the other hand, the reads aligned with similar to 15,000 of the 21,407 genes in the hg19 human reference database. The correlation of expressed genes was extremely high (r = 0.93; P < .0001) between the dog and human databases. A pathway analysis using the hg19 reference revealed increased expression of p53 pathway related (P < 10(-10)) and inflammatory interleukin related (P < 10(-10)) genes in the CHF selleck compound model.

Conclusions: The use of the human genome as a reference in global transcriptome analyses of dogs is a useful approach for investigating diseases such as CHF. Such an approach would also be useful for analyzing disease models in other experimental animals. (J Cardiac Fail 2012;18:872-878)”
“Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) measurements have been made at X-band and room temperature on monoclinic HfO2 and ZrO2 powders from several suppliers. They reveal the presence of eight main paramagnetic centers H1, H2, H3, H4, and Z1, Z2, Z3, and Z4. H1 and Z1 are analogous as H4 and Z4 and H2 and Z2 are similar as H3 and Z3.