纳米银在小鼠体内的组织分布

将分散在生理盐水中的纳米银以尾静脉注射的方式注入小鼠体内,采用电感耦合等离子质谱(ICP-MS)法检测其在小鼠体内的组织分布情况,并利用DAS药物动力学软件分析其在血液中的动力学参数.实验结果显示:纳米银经尾静脉注射进入小鼠体内后,血液中的w(Ag)在染毒1 h内呈快速下降趋势,其后的24 h内w(Ag)处于平稳状态;纳米银在体内的消除半衰期为22.8 h,分布容积为26.8 L/kg;进入体内的纳米银可随血液循环快速分布到全身各脏器,6 h后即可在小鼠的多个主要脏器中检测到银的存在,其中脾脏中的w(Ag)约为203μg/g;滞留在体内的银主要分布在肝脏和脾脏中.由此可见,纳米银具有较高的组织亲和力,肝脏和脾脏可能是纳米银的主要蓄积作用靶器官.     

小鼠基因敲除的研究进展

随着人类基因组计划(HGP)的顺利完成,后基因时代的生物学研究迫切需要一种有效的基因功能分析方法。基因敲除小鼠模型的应用,为研究基因的功能和寻找新的治疗人类疾病的干预措施提供了有力支持。基因打靶和基因捕获是两种不同的通过胚胎干细胞(ES细胞)制作基因敲除小鼠的技术。基因捕获具有高通量、随机性、序列标记等特点,而基因打靶则是针对特定基因的敲除。自基因打靶和基因捕获小鼠首次亮相距今已有近20年的时间。近年来,针对基因打靶和基因捕获的新工具不断涌现,并且相应的组织也已经成立。这些组织能够利用这两种方法敲除小鼠基因组中的基因。国际基因捕获协会(The International Gene Trap Consortium,IGTC)和基因敲除小鼠计划(The Knockout Mouse Project,KOMP)已着手创建世界范围内用于科研的便利资源,并且计划敲除所有小鼠的基因。KOMP的组织者认为这与HGP一样具有重要意义。从传统的基因打靶到现在的高通量的条件基因打靶,基因打靶的方法已经发生了很大的变化。捕获和打靶两者的组合优势大大提升了基因捕获的范围和基因打靶的效率。作为一种新开发的插入式突变系统,转座子在捕获基因方面比逆转录病毒更具有优势。国际基因敲除小鼠协会(The International Knockout Mouse Consortium,IKMC)的出现标志着全球性合作的开始。该组织致力于系统地敲除小鼠基因组中所有基因,进而开展功能基因组的研究。     

RNA interference in adult mice

RNA interference is an evolutionarily conserved surveillance mechanism that responds to double-stranded RNA by sequence-specific silencing of homologous genes. Here we show that transgene expression can be suppressed in adult mice by synthetic small interfering RNAs and by small-hairpin RNAs transcribed in vivo from DNA templates. We also show the therapeutic potential of this technique by demonstrating effective targeting of a sequence from hepatitis C virus by RNA interference in vivo.     

Pre-B cells in kappa-transgenic mice

Recent experiments have shown that the microinjected kappa-chain gene of transgenic mice is expressed in a tissue-specific fashion only in B lymphocytes. The next step was to determine whether, within the B-lymphocyte lineage, the kappa-chain gene was expressed in a normal developmental fashion. Normally, only mu heavy(H)-chain genes, and not kappa-chain genes, are expressed in pre-B cells. To obtain cloned cell lines derived from early cells of the B-cell lineage, we transformed bone marrow cells from kappa-transgenic mice with Abelson murine leukaemia virus (A-MuLV) and tested the resultant cell lines for the retention of the kappa transgene and its expression in RNA and protein. We found that cells with the pre-B phenotype exist in kappa-transgenic mice. We further observed that in A-MuLV-transformed cell lines from a kappa-transgenic mouse with a high copy number of the transgene, the proportion of cell lines expressing kappa (transgenic kappa) was higher than in cell lines from normal or low copy number transgenic mice.     

Morphine reward in dopamine-deficient mice

Dopamine has been widely implicated as a mediator of many of the behavioural responses to drugs of abuse. To test the hypothesis that dopamine is an essential mediator of various opiate-induced responses, we administered morphine to mice unable to synthesize dopamine. We found that dopamine-deficient mice are unable to mount a normal locomotor response to morphine, but a small dopamine-independent increase in locomotion remains. Dopamine-deficient mice have a rightward shift in the dose-response curve to morphine on the tail-flick test (a pain sensitivity assay), suggesting either a decreased sensitivity to the analgesic effects of morphine and/or basal hyperalgesia. In contrast, dopamine-deficient mice display a robust conditioned place preference for morphine when given either caffeine or l-dihydroxyphenylalanine (a dopamine precursor that restores dopamine throughout the brain) during the testing phases. Together, these data demonstrate that dopamine is a crucial component of morphine-induced locomotion, dopamine may contribute to morphine analgesia, but that dopamine is not required for morphine-induced reward as measured by conditioned place preference.     

Hypervariable ultra-long telomeres in mice

Telomere structure and behaviour is less well understood in vertebrates than it is in ciliates and yeasts (reviewed in ref. 1). Like all other eukaryotic chromosomes, those of vertebrates terminate in an array of a short repeated sequence. In vertebrates this sequence is (TTAGGG)n, as shown by in situ hybridization. In humans, these terminal repeats are heterogeneous in length, averaging about 10 kilobases in blood cells. Here we report the structure and inheritance of the terminal repeats present at mouse telomeres. The (TTAGGG)n tracts are many times larger than those present at human telomeres. Because of their constancy in length through somatic cell divisions, they are resolved as multiple discrete restriction fragments of up to 150 kilobases. Strikingly, this banding pattern is highly polymorphic within populations of inbred mice, suggesting an unusually high mutation rate. Indeed, although the banding pattern is inherited in a largely mendelian fashion, (TTAGGG)n tracts of new size appear frequently in family studies.