| title: | Growth factor and GF receptor expression and modulation in farm animals |
|---|---|
| reg no: | ETF5734 |
| project type: | Estonian Science Foundation research grant |
| subject: |
4.4. Animal Husbandry (incl. Pisciculture) |
| status: | accepted |
| institution: | Institute of Animal Husbandry at EAU |
| head of project: | Avo Karus |
| duration: | 01.01.2004 - 31.12.2007 |
| description: | The cytokine insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is considered to mediate anabolic growth hormone actions in various tissues and species. During postnatal growth, IGF-1 stimulates protein synthesis and improves glucose utilisation. In addition, locally expressed IGF-1 is an important growth regulator acting in an auto- and paracrine manner. In cattle breeding IGF-1 is in the use as selection parameter since 1989 directed toward improvement of marbling scores and quality grades of beef cattle. Some aspects of IGFs expression in bovine tissues are studied by Pfaffl and coworkers, but these works are mainly oriented on method validation and only newborn calves were studied. Plath-Gabler reported about the study of IGF-1, IGF-2 and their receptors in cows in late gravity focusing on mammogenese and lactogenese. Both growth factors showed to be regulated in expression level, what underlines our expression regulation expectations in sexual development stages. Nevertheless, because of its high sensitivity, reverse-transcription with subsequent polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is being increasingly used to quantify physiologically relevant changes in gene expression. The first goal of our study is to investigate the normal expression of IGF-1 and IGF-1 Receptor gene. In the literature, it is controversially discussed whether the hormones and cytokines up- or down-regulate their own receptor expression. For that the relative quantification of IGF-1 and IGF-1-R mRNA in swine and bovine muscle and liver tissues will be made using real-time RT-PCR procedure by M. Pfaffl, as well as the content of IGF-1 protein will be measured using RIA. The second goal of this study is connected to our successful previous grant (ESF Grant No 3600) results, where we succeed to show the linkage between animal blood serum IGF-1 content and future milk protein and milk fat percentage. These correlations were most expressed in late puberty of animals. So we plan to describe gene-expression processes in animal aging and to give additional attention to late puberty, with further study of noninvasive modulation of the expression of growth factors. |
| project group | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no | name | institution | position | |
| 1. | Avo Karus | Institute of Animal Husbandry at EAU | professor | |