Antiapoptotic effects of relaxin in organotypic brain slice cultures
LE3 .A278 2011
2011
Wilson, Brian
Acadia University
Bachelor of Science
Honours
Biology
Relaxin is a peptide hormone, which belongs to the insulin superfamily. However, relaxin does not share any functional similarities with insulin. The first studied function of relaxin was its active role during pregnancy, which caused relaxation of the pelvic ligaments. In more recent research, relaxin has been shown to play a protective role during ischemic stress within the heart, pancreas, spleen and brain. Injecting relaxin into the brain prior to the induction of cerebral ischemia resulted in a smaller infarct size. Relaxin may have caused this due to a cellular mechanism regulating apoptosis. This study aimed to quantify the difference of apoptosis occurring with and without the relaxin treatment in brain slices under ischemic conditions. Organotypic cultures of neonatal rat brains were given one of three different treatments, normoxic, hypoxic, or hypoxic with relaxin. Following incubation, the tissue was flash frozen prior to protein isolation. A sandwich ELISA was used to quantify the amount of apoptosis occurring for each treatment by measuring the concentration of histone present in each sample. The data from this protocol did not show any significant difference between the hypoxic and hypoxic with relaxin treatments, however there was a pattern that showed a decrease in the amount of apoptosis occurring in the relaxin treatment group.
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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:771