As the sheer number of transgenic mice strains grow and rodent models of pediatric disease increase, there is an expanding need for a comprehensive, standardized battery of neonatal mouse motor tests. These tests can validate injury or disease models, determine treatment efficacy and/or assess motor behaviors in new transgenic strains. This paper presents a series of neonatal motor tests to eva...

Myotendinous junctions (MTJs) are specialized sites on the muscle surface where forces generated by myofibrils are transmitted across the sarcolemma to the extracellular matrix. At the ultrastructural level, the interface between the sarcolemma and extracellular matrix is highly folded and interdigitated at these junctions. In this study, the effect of exercise and growth hormone (GH) treatment...

Tbx4 is a member of the T-box family of transcription factor genes, which have been shown to play important roles in development. We have ablated Tbx4 function using targeted mutagenesis in the mouse. Embryos homozygous for the null allele fail to undergo chorioallantoic fusion and die by 10.5 days post coitus. The allantoises of Tbx4-mutant embryos are stunted, apoptotic and display abnormal d...

Counteracting the atrophy of skeletal muscle associated with disuse has significant implications for minimizing the wasting and weakness in plaster casting, joint immobilization, and other forms of limb unloading, with relevance to orthopedics, sports medicine, and plastic and reconstructive surgery. We tested the hypothesis that antibody-directed myostatin inhibition would attenuate the loss o...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of reloading on atrophied muscle and the time course of hypertrophy and regeneration. Forty-nine male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to groups for hindlimb suspension (HS), hindlimb suspension and reloading (R), or control (C0). Rats in the HS group were suspended for 14 days. Rats in the R group were randomly divided into five subgrou...

Objective The aim of this study was to measure the ratio of bone cortex (C) to bone diameter (D), (C/D) in radius/tibia, metacarpus /metatarsus and proximal phalanges in fore and hindlimbs to be used as a diagnostic guide in metabolic and nutritional diseases in Minature Donkey. DesignExperimental study AnimalsEight adult Minature donkeys. ProceduresLateromedial, dorsopalmar and dorsoplantar ra...

33 After incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI), compensatory changes occur 34 throughout the whole neuraxis including the spinal cord below the lesion as suggested by 35 previous experiments using a dual SCI paradigm. Indeed, cats submitted to a lateral 36 spinal hemisection at T10-11 and trained on a treadmill for 3-14 weeks re-expressed 37 bilateral hindlimb locomotion as soon as 24 hours after...

BACKGROUND In order to identify factors that stimulate arteriogenesis after ischemia, we followed gene expression profiles in two extreme models for collateral artery formation over 28 days after hindlimb ischemia, namely "good-responding" C57BL/6 mice and "poor-responding" BALB/c mice. METHODS AND RESULTS Although BALB/c mice show very poor blood flow recovery after ischemia, most known proa...

Ingalls, Christopher P., Gordon L. Warren, and R. B. Armstrong. Intracellular Ca21 transients in mouse soleus muscle after hindlimb unloading and reloading. J. Appl. Physiol. 87(1): 386–390, 1999.—The objective of this study was to determine whether altered intracellular Ca21 handling contributes to the specific force loss in the soleus muscle after unloading and/or subsequent reloading of mous...

Recent rapid advances in experimental biology have expanded the opportunity for interdisciplinary investigations of the evolution of form and function in non-traditional model species. However, historical divisions of philosophy and methodology between evolutionary/organismal biologists and developmental geneticists often preclude an effective merging of disciplines. In an effort to overcome th...