The preweaning behavioral development was compared in 3 hamster species: the golden (Mesocricetus auratus), Chinese (Cricetulus griseus), and Djungarian (Phodopus sungorus). Differences in the age of appearance of action patterns could not be summarized by simply ranking species on either precocity or developmental speed, nor were they eliminated by measuring age from conception. Problems in th...

Pyometra in a six-month-old nulliparous golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) treated with aglepristone M.C. Pisu a , A. Andolfatto a & M.C. Veronesi b a VRC – Centro di Referenza Veterinario, Torino, Italy b Department of Verteninary Sciences for Health, Animal Science and Food Safety, Università Degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy Accepted author version posted online: 25 Oct 2012.Version of ...

In this study we cloned and analysed partial cDNA of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and p75 TNF-R receptor of Syrian golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus). We obtained a 382-bp sequence of TNF and a 148-bp sequence coding for p75 TNF-R. The primers used for the cloning were designed on the basis of inter-species homology, thus presumably can be used for cloning and analysis of TNF and p75 TNF-R ge...

The hamster has been shown to share a variety of metabolic similarities with humans. To replicate human acute pancreatitis with hamsters, we comparatively studied the efficacy of common methods, such as the peritoneal injections of caerulein, L-arginine, the retrograde infusion of sodium taurocholate, and another novel model with concomitant administration of ethanol and fatty acid. The severit...

A well-differentiated ductal adenocarcinoma of the Syrian golden hamster induced by N-nitrosobis(2-oxopropyl)amine was transplantable to both nude mice and inbred Syrian hamsters. The tumor grew rapidly in the nude mouse (12-fold increase in size at 45 days) in contrast to its growth in hamster (3-fold increase in size at 45 days). A curious finding associated with the slow-growing tumor in the...

The golden Syrian hamster is the model of choice or the only rodent model for studying many human diseases. However, the lack of gene targeting tools in hamsters severely limits their use in biomedical research. Here, we report the first successful application of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to efficiently conduct gene targeting in hamsters. We designed five synthetic single-guide RNAs (sgRNAs)--thre...