T his manuscript describes a ‘‘dry laboratory’’ using the ‘‘virtual rat’’ to help students understand the hormonal regulation of gastrointestinal function. The laboratory was modeled after a recent exercise that used the virtual rat to teach basic endocrine physiology. The virtual rat concept avoids the many obstacles associated with animal experimentation (for example, lack of adequate animal ...

To collect rat mutations and increase the value of the rat model system, we introduced fancy-derived mutations to the laboratory and carried out genetic analyses. Six fancy rats were shipped from a fancy rat colony in the USA and used as founders. After initial crosses with a laboratory strain, TM/Kyo or PVG/Seac, inbreeding started and 6 partially inbred lines, including 2 sublines, were produ...

the µ (mu) opioid receptors, which mediate the effects of morphine, are widely distributed in brain. the purpose of this study was to design a simple expression system for rat µ-receptor in escherichia coli (bl21). in this laboratory study, rat µ-receptor cdna was isolated from pcdna3 vector using xba1 and hind3 restriction enzymes. pet-15b was digested by nco1 restriction enzyme. µ-receptor cd...

1. The activities of four enzymes of glycolysis were assayed in the liver of five different strains of rats (four ;Wistar-derived', one Sprague-Dawley) kept on three different but very similar diets. 2. Major strain differences were found for the activities of pyruvate kinase (3-fold), alpha-glycerophosphate dehydrogenase (5-fold), glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase (3-fold) and triokinase ...