Browsing by Subject "Eye"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Generation of mice carrying a knockout-first and conditional-ready allele of transforming growth factor beta2 gene
    (Wiley, 2014-09) Ahmed, A. S. Ishtiaq; Bose, Gracelyn C.; Huang, Li; Azhar, Mohamad; Department of Pediatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine
    Transforming growth factor beta2 (TGFβ2) is a multifunctional protein which is expressed in several embryonic and adult organs. TGFB2 mutations can cause Loeys Dietz syndrome, and its dysregulation is involved in cardiovascular, skeletal, ocular, and neuromuscular diseases, osteoarthritis, tissue fibrosis, and various forms of cancer. TGFβ2 is involved in cell growth, apoptosis, cell migration, cell differentiation, cell-matrix remodeling, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, and wound healing in a highly context-dependent and tissue-specific manner. Tgfb2(-/-) mice die perinatally from congenital heart disease, precluding functional studies in adults. Here, we have generated mice harboring Tgfb2(βgeo) (knockout-first lacZ-tagged insertion) gene-trap allele and Tgfb2(flox) conditional allele. Tgfb2(βgeo/βgeo) or Tgfb2(βgeo/-) mice died at perinatal stage from the same congenital heart defects as Tgfb2(-/-) mice. β-galactosidase staining successfully detected Tgfb2 expression in the heterozygous Tgfb2(βgeo) fetal tissue sections. Tgfb2(flox) mice were produced by crossing the Tgfb2(+/βgeo) mice with the FLPeR mice. Tgfb2(flox/-) mice were viable. Tgfb2 conditional knockout (Tgfb2(cko/-) ) fetuses were generated by crossing of Tgfb2(flox/-) mice with Tgfb2(+/-) ; EIIaCre mice. Systemic Tgfb2(cko/-) embryos developed cardiac defects which resembled the Tgfb2(βgeo/βgeo) , Tgfb2(βgeo/-) , and Tgfb2(-/-) fetuses. In conclusion, Tgfb2(βgeo) and Tgfb2(flox) mice are novel mouse strains which will be useful for investigating the tissue specific expression and function of TGFβ2 in embryonic development, adult organs, and disease pathogenesis and cancer. genesis
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    How Chlamydia trachomatis conquered gut microbiome-derived antimicrobial compounds and found a new home in the eye
    (National Academy of Sciences, 2019-06-18) Banerjee, Arkaprabha; Nelson, David E.; Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine
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    Interstrain differences in the development of pyometra after estrogen treatment of rats
    (American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, 2009-09) Brossia, Lisa Jane; Roberts, Christopher Sean; Lopez, Jennifer T.; Bigsby, Robert M.; Dynlacht, Joseph R.; Pharmacology and Toxicology, School of Medicine
    This case report describes the unanticipated development of pyometra in Brown Norway rats after treatment with estrogen. Sprague Dawley and Brown Norway rats were ovariectomized and randomly assigned to treatment groups (subcutaneous implantation of either a capsule containing 20 mg 17beta-estradiol or an empty capsule, as a control). After irradiation of only the right eye, the rats were followed for several months in an attempt to determine the effects of estrogen on radiation cataractogenesis and investigate potential strain differences in this phenomenon. However, all Brown Norway rats that received estradiol treatment developed pyometra, whereas none the Sprague Dawley or control Brown Norway rats did. This case demonstrates the potential adverse effects of exogenous estrogen therapy, which are strain-specific in the rat. Caution should be taken when designing estrogen-related experiments involving Brown Norway rats and other potentially sensitive strains.
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    A NEW APPROACH FOR HUMAN IDENTIFICATION USING THE EYE
    (2010) Thomas, N. Luke; Du, Yingzi; Rizkalla, Maher; King, Brian
    The vein structure in the sclera, the white and opaque outer protective covering of the eye, is anecdotally stable over time and unique to each person. As a result, it is well suited for use as a biometric for human identification. A few researchers have performed sclera vein pattern recognition and have reported promising, but low accuracy, initial results. Sclera recognition poses several challenges: the vein structure moves and deforms with the movement of the eye and its surrounding tissues; images of sclera patterns are often defocused and/or saturated; and, most importantly, the vein structure in the sclera is multi-layered and has complex non-linear deformation. The previous approaches in sclera recognition have treated the sclera patterns as a one-layered vein structure, and, as a result, their sclera recognition accuracy is not high. In this thesis, we propose a new method for sclera recognition with the following contributions: First, we developed a color-based sclera region estimation scheme for sclera segmentation. Second, we designed a Gabor wavelet based sclera pattern enhancement method, and an adaptive thresholding method to emphasize and binarize the sclera vein patterns. Third, we proposed a line descriptor based feature extraction, registration, and matching method that is scale-, orientation-, and deformation-invariant, and can mitigate the multi-layered deformation effects and tolerate segmentation error. It is empirically verified using the UBIRIS and IUPUI multi-wavelength databases that the proposed method can perform accurate sclera recognition. In addition, the recognition results are compared to iris recognition algorithms, with very comparable results.