神经生物学

Transgenic mouse models of neurodegenerative diseases may have considerable commercial value. In many cases, that value is linked to the intellectual property rights associated with the model. This chapter discusses the protection of intellectual property, including patent, c ...

The neurochemical alterations underlying the cognitive and behavioral symptoms that constitute the clinical picture of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which should be reproduced by an animal model of the disease, are briefly described. The ideal animal model of AD and related dementias sho ...

Dementia is a clinical diagnosis; however, none of the clinical scales guarantee high sensitivity or specificity. Therefore, neuroimaging is often crucial for proper assessment. The most typical neurological symptoms of dementia are often discerned using computed X-ray tomogra ...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are two most common forms of presenile dementia where insoluble protein deposits as intra- or extracellular aggregates. During the past decade, a number of mouse models have been devised based on human mutant genes associated wi ...

The development of complex disease models requires the parallel development or optimization of valid behavioral paradigms assessing complex brain-behavior relations. Besides validity of the applied paradigm, standardization at the level of experimental animals, testing ...

The field of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research has been quite fortunate – in contrast to some other neurodegenerative psychiatric diseases – in that a number of animal models have been developed based on genetic and neuropathological information. These animal models have been “validat ...

In the quest for understanding human neurodegenerative disorders, a variety of organisms have been used to create disease models. Because of its many advantages, Drosophila melanogaster is currently being used to model many human conditions including poly Q expansion disorders such ...

Zebrafish, a freshwater tropical fish, is a premiere model organism to study vertebrate development. Fast external development and transparency during embryogenesis allow for visual screening at the macroscopical and microscopical level, including visualization of organ ...

The free living nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) has been extensively studied by biological, agricultural, and medical scientists for over 40 years. The animal has several characteristics that make it useful as a model organism. For example, the nematodes are transpar ...

The senescence-accelerated mouse (SAM) strains, consisting of nine SAM-prone (SAMP) mice strains and three SAM-resistant (SAMR) strains, have been used extensively as models for various age-related disorders. SAMP mice undergo accelerated aging while SAMR mice undergo normal agi ...

No animal spontaneously suffers from Alzheimer’s disease (AD), nor can it be experimentally induced. However, there is a huge research need for models of AD. Lesion-induced vertebrate models of this disease have been, and indeed remain, extremely important in the study of AD pathogenesis and p ...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a decline in cognitive function and the presence of neuropathological hallmarks, including the accumulation of extracellular Aβ. Aspects of AD can be modeled in rodents by direct intracerebr ...

The PDAPP mouse has been a very useful model for studying mechanisms underlying amyloid-β (Aβ) metabolism, aggregation, and deposition, and for aiding in the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). One of the initial difficulties in produc ...

The search for a good animal, preferably mouse, model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most imperative in present medical research, given the increasing prevalence of this disorder in an aging population and its enormous social, economic, and personal impact. In 1996, Karen Hsiao and coll ...

Animal models are considered essential in research for elucidation of human disease processes and subsequent testing of potential therapeutic strategies. This is especially true for neurodegenerative disorders, in which the first steps in pathogenesis are often not accessible ...

Since the identification of the mutations in presenilin 1 and presenilin 2 genes more than a decade ago, a great deal of research has filled the gap in our knowledge of mutations underlying various phenotypes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that appear relatively early in the life of presenilin (PS) mut ...

One of the major challenges in biology is to understand better the molecular regulation of signaling pathways that control complex cellular processes such as motility and proliferation. The experimental approaches employed in such investigations must gather information on cha ...

Small photochromic molecules are widespread in nature and serve as switches for a plethora of light-controlled processes. In a typical photoreceptor, the different geometries and polarities of the photochrome isomers are tightly coupled to functionally relevant conformatio ...

In a truly interdisciplinary fashion, organic chemists and molecular biologists have engineered novel systems that allow externally applied light to regulate protein confirmation in living systems. These highly engineered systems typically involve two distinct parts. The f ...

Ligand-activated proteins can be controlled with light by means of synthetic photoisomerizable tethered ligands (PTLs). The application of PTLs to ligand-gated ion channels, including the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and ionotropic glutamate receptors, is reviewed wi ...