Renjini Ramadasan Nair

Seattle Children’s Research Institute · Developmental Therapeutics

What we already know about this topic: In mice, restriction of loss of the mitochondrial complex I gene Ndufs4 to glutamatergic neurons confers a profound hypersensitivity to volatile anesthetics.Astrocytes are crucial to glutamatergic synapse functioning during excitatory transmission. What this article tells us that is new: In a tamoxifen-acti...

Knockout of the mitochondrial complex I protein, NDUFS4, profoundly increases sensitivity of mice to volatile anesthetics. In mice carrying an Ndufs4lox/lox gene, adeno-associated virus expressing Cre recombinase was injected into regions of the brain postulated to affect sensitivity to volatile anesthetics. These injections generated otherwise phe...

Viral injection coordinates and quantities. (DOC)

Fluorescent images of brain slices from mice injected with inactive Δ-Cre virus into the (A) VN, (B) MPTA, (C) CMT, (D) DMT and (E) PAC (Magnification X40). Scale bar: 1mm. (TIF)

EC50s for ISO and HAL for the the global KO and control mice in the LORR assay. Previously published data for the TC assay [3] are included for comparison. (DOC)

Loss of NDUFS4 in the PAC. Unmerged and merged confocal images of the (A) Δ–Cre injected and (B) WT-Cre injected PAC (Magnification X1000). White arrows point to cells which retained the red NDUFS4 fluorescence in the absence of virus infection. Scale bar: 10μm. (TIF)

Cytochrome C immunostaining in the virus injected regions. Unmerged and merged confocal images of the (A) Δ–Cre injected and (B) WT-Cre injected VN (Magnification X1000). (TIF)

Scatter plots showing individual EC50 values using ISO and HAL for LORR and TC in the vestibular nucleus (VN), mesopontine tegmental anesthetic area (MPTA), central medial thalamus (CMT), dorsal medial thalamus (DMT) and parietal association cortex (PAC). Large cross bars represent the mean of EC50s for ISO (red dots) and HAL (black dots) for the W...

Muscular dystrophies (MDs) and inflammatory myopathies (IMs) are debilitating skeletal muscle disorders characterized by common pathological events including myodegeneration and inflammation. However, an experimental model representing both muscle pathologies and displaying most of the distinctive markers has not been characterized. We investigated...

Calpain-3, a Ca [2]+ -dependent protease has been implicated in the pathology of neuromuscular disorders (NMDs). The current study aimed to analyze calpain-3 expression in cases diagnosed as muscular dystrophy from the Indian population. Calpain-3 Western blot analysis in muscle biopsies of immunohistochemically confirmed cases of Duchenne muscular...

Muscular dystrophies (MDs) such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), sarcoglycanopathy (Sgpy) and dysferlinopathy (Dysfy) are recessive genetic neuromuscular diseases that display muscle degeneration. Although these MDs have comparable endpoints of muscle pathology, the onset, severity and the course of these diseases are diverse. Different mechan...