PURPOSE In juvenile tree shrews, positioning a negative-power lens in front of an eye produces a hyperopic shift in refractive state and causes a compensatory increase in axial length over several days so that the eye is myopic when the lens is removed. During negative lens compensation, the scleral extracellular matrix is remodeled. A biomechanical property of the sclera, creep rate, increases...

The ecological study of small mammals often uses the cage-trapping method, installed with baits. Capture rates vary according to different baits used. We want determine bait preferences by mammal groups. approach used common domestic types available, namely, aromatic banana, sweet potato peanut butter, oil palm fruit, dried salted fish, jackfruit, and roasted coconut flesh. Sampling was conduct...

Tree shrews represent a suitable animal model to study the pathogenesis of human diseases as they are phylogenetically close to primates and have a well-developed central nervous system that possesses many homologies with primates. Therefore, in our study, we investigated whether tree shrews can be used to explore the addictive behaviors induced by morphine. Firstly, to investigate the psychoac...

Tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri) are small diurnal mammals capable of quick and agile navigation. Electroretinographic and behavioral studies have indicated that tree shrews possess very good temporal vision, but the neuronal mechanisms underlying that temporal vision are not well understood. We used single-unit extracellular recording techniques to characterize the temporal response properties o...

The tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri) diverged from the primate order (Primates) and are classified as Scandentia, a separate taxonomic group of mammals. The tree shrew has been suggested to use an animal model to study human disease but the genomic sequences of tree shrew is largely unidentified. Here we identified the full-length cDNA sequence of a housekeeping gene, Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate D...

We have recently demonstrated that placental mammalian species such as pig and dog express a novel proapoptotic protease, caspase-15, whereas mouse and humans lack this enzyme. Here we investigated the evolutionary fate of the caspase-15 gene in different mammalian lineages by analyzing whole-genome shotgun sequences of 30 mammalian species for the presence of caspase-15 orthologs. Caspase-15 g...

HBV covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) is drug-resistant and responsible for viral persistence. To facilitate the development of anti-cccDNA drugs, we developed a minicircle DNA vector (MC)-based technology to produce large quantity of recombined cccDNA (rcccDNA) resembling closely to its wild-type counterpart both in structure and function. The rcccDNA differed to the wild-type cccDNA (wt...

The efferent innervation and some characteristics of nerve fibers of the liver lobule in the tree shrew, a primate, are described. Nerve endings on hepatocytes were encountered regularly and were determined to be efferent adrenergic nerves. Transmission electron microscopy revealed nerve endings and varicosities in close apposition to the hepatocytes adjacent to the connective tissue of the tri...