RESUMO
This study aims to explore the effects of climate on the performance and offspring development of aged Merino sheep relocated from an arid, cold environment with harsh grazing conditions to a dry, temperate-cold valley with irrigated pasture production. We utilized time series data from merino sheep in a dry temperate-cold climate in southern Argentina to characterize their growth curves, assess the impact of climate on performance, and compare offspring growth with maternal growth. Our approach involved developing a dynamic model, a non-autonomous differential equation growth curve based on the widely used Brody model. The model considered variables such as local temperature, age, sex, origin, and pregnancy status to determine the optimal combination of parameters for sheep growth in our dataset. The results have shown that moving the old sheep from the steppe to the valley resulted in an increase of an average of 1 kg in weight, but their offspring had an asymptotic weight of 65 kg, 17 kg more than their mothers. The optimum temperature for the growth rate was 15.7+/-0.56 C and 8.7+/-6.3C for the asymptotic weight.
Assuntos
Temperatura , Animais , Feminino , Masculino , Ovinos/crescimento & desenvolvimento , Ovinos/fisiologia , Argentina , Gravidez , Clima , Modelos Biológicos , Peso CorporalRESUMO
It has been shown that early life manipulations produce behavioral, neural, and hormonal effects. The long term consequences of repeated maternal separation (RMS) plus cold stress and ethanol intake were evaluated during adolescence and adult rats on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in male adult Wistar rats. RMS+ cold stress was applied from postnatal day (PD) 2 in which the pups were separated from their mothers and exposed to cold stress (4°C) 1h per day for 20days; controls remained with their mothers. Then they were exposed to either voluntary ethanol (6%) or dextrose (1%) intake for 7days: PD22-29 and PD59-66. Half of the animals were sacrificed, while the others were exposed to acute stress (AS) for 2h and then they were killed. RMS+ cold stress: a) increased voluntary ethanol intake in adolescent and adult rats; b) reduced protein expression (Western measurements) in corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) in hypothalamus (Hyp) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) in hippocampus (Hic) while increased glucocorticoid receptor (GR) in Hic; c) decreased plasmatic levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and increased corticosterone (COR) levels in HPA axis, d) adult rats exposure a new AS incremented ACTH and COR levels. However, this modification did not alter the HPA axis capacity to respond to a new type of stressor. These results demonstrate the consequences of early life stress on the vulnerability of ethanol consumption and HPA axis responsiveness to a stressor in adult rats.
Assuntos
Consumo de Bebidas Alcoólicas/metabolismo , Sistema Hipotálamo-Hipofisário/crescimento & desenvolvimento , Privação Materna , Sistema Hipófise-Suprarrenal/crescimento & desenvolvimento , Estresse Fisiológico/fisiologia , Estresse Psicológico/metabolismo , Hormônio Adrenocorticotrópico/sangue , Animais , Animais Recém-Nascidos , Depressores do Sistema Nervoso Central/administração & dosagem , Temperatura Baixa , Corticosterona/metabolismo , Hormônio Liberador da Corticotropina/metabolismo , Modelos Animais de Doenças , Etanol/administração & dosagem , Sistema Hipotálamo-Hipofisário/efeitos dos fármacos , Sistema Hipotálamo-Hipofisário/metabolismo , Masculino , Sistema Hipófise-Suprarrenal/efeitos dos fármacos , Sistema Hipófise-Suprarrenal/metabolismo , Distribuição Aleatória , Ratos Wistar , Receptores de Glucocorticoides/metabolismo , Receptores de Mineralocorticoides/metabolismo , Resiliência Psicológica , Fatores de TempoRESUMO
It is well known that animals exposed to stressful stimuli during their early life develop different neurological disorders when they become adults. In this study, we evaluated the effect of acute cold stress on gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and L-Serine (L-Ser) transporters in vitro, using the uptake of [(3)H]-GABA and [(3)H]L-Ser by synaptosomes-enriched fractions isolated from rat cerebral cortex during postnatal development. GABA and L-Ser uptake studies in vitro will be used in this investigation as a colateral evidence of changes in the expression of transporters of GABA and L-Ser. We observed that the maximum velocity (V (max)) in L-Ser and GABA uptake after stress session increased in all stages studied. In contrast, K (m) values of L-Ser uptake enhancent in almost age calculated, excluding at PD21 after cold stress during development, at the same time as K (m) (uptake affinity) values of GABA increased in just about age considered but not at PD5 compared with the control group. Finally we investigated the mechanism by which cells regulate the substrate affinity of L-Ser and GABA transporters. We demonstrated a significantly increase in total PKC activity to PD5 from PD21. Pretreatment with PKC inhibitor: staurosporine (SP) led to a restoration of control uptake in several postnatal-days suggesting a relationship between amino acids system and PKC activation. These findings suggest that a single exposure to postnatal cold stress at different periods after birth modifies both GABA and L-Ser transporters and the related increase in total PKC activity could be intracellular events that participate in neuronal plasticity by early life stress, which could be relevant to function of transporters in the adult rat brain.