Mamels life animal

Among animal models , C. elegans and Drosophila melanogaster are the heavyweight champions in this domain, but when it comes to lactation, as non-mammals they are of limited use. Enter the lab rat, or mouse in this case. Mice allow researchers to systematically investigate mechanistic pathways through which mother’s milk influences offspring neurobiology, immune function, and behavior. Liu and colleagues (2013) investigated these in concert with the precision and dedication of a neuroscientist Sherlock Holmes , reported in Nature Neuroscience, December 2013. in which I write a blog post almost entirely to justify including this image. The target of their research was maternal tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), one of the traffic controllers of the immune system. TNF is a proinflammatory cytokine that stimulates the acute phase reactions of the immune response system, regulating the actions of other immune cells. Generally always present at low levels, TNF increases physiologically dur

Mother’s milk is more than a food full of essential nutrients and more than a medicine packed with protective immunofactors. Mother’s milk contains signals- hormones of maternal origin- that influence infant metabolism, neurobiology, and behavior. Profs  Frank “Skip” Bartol and Carol Bagnell coined the term “lactocrine programming” to describe the effects of these hormones in the baby. Wonderfully covered  by Carl Zimmer for the NYT , is  the sequel to our 2011 monkey milk cortisol paper .  And like all self-respecting sequels, we had to pack in more special effects (new predictors & outcomes!), an expanded cast of characters (N>100!), and an extended run-time (longitudinal data!). Monkey Milk Cortisol Reloaded original photo by Alex Georgiev In other words, we collected milk at multiple time-points across lactation, measured FOOD & SIGNAL in milk (available milk energy AND cortisol) and correlated these milk features with infant growth AND temperament. And th