[Histonet] Re: Dear Santa, I would like antiibodies for Christmas

[Tyrone Genade]

Hi Bob,

> From: "Robert Richmond" <RSRICHMOND <@t> aol.com>
> Subject: [Histonet] Re: Dear Santa, I would like antiibodies for

> What is their particular research interest? Are they now as easily
> bred and raised as the much-studied zebrafish, Danio (=Brachydanio)
> rerio?

I'm doing aging research. Go to Pubmed and search with "markofsky
guentheri" and see what has already been done with these stunning
little fish. If you search with "furzeri" you will get some more
interesting hits. Two of the hits will be "my" articles. In the
Current Biol article we report on the life-prolonging effects of
resveratrol on N. furzeri.

I've tried to set up the furzeri in my lab here but for some bizaar
reason I just can't get them going here. I can hatch and rear every
other Nothobranchius species but furzeri---and it isn't like the
furzeri are the most difficult to keep and breed that I have. (The
biggest joke is that I went to Italy 4 years back specially to run the
fishrom there and spawn these guys! Now I can't do it in my own back
yard.) In any case, I had hundreds of guentheri and figured I would
"play" with them until I can find out what is going wrong with the
furzeri. In the mean time the furzeri have been put on the back burner
in favour of the guentheri.

The guentheri live longer (about 9 months for my strain) and develop
other interesting pathologies other than dementia (like furzeri) such
as kidney and liver neoplasmas and degeneration. They also show
neurodegeneraton, and have got some stunning images with the confocal
microscope on whole-mounts. You can watch the nerve tracts go from
neatly organized tracts at 12 weeks, to disorganised at 26 weeks, and
then a shambles at 34 weeks and the Smi31, instead of showing a solid
nerve, shows a string of Smi31 + "beads" where a nerve tract used to
be. We are busy getting all our "ducks in a row" in preparation of a
publication on this. Next step is to dose with resveratrol and see
what changes.

This is where those antibodies I mentioned come in. These are against
proteins/epitopes which are known to change with age and in response
to resveratrol in tissue cutlure. i would like to see if such changes
can be visualized in situ. How resveratrol actually works in situ, and
just what cellular effects there are, are not really known in a
vertebrate lifespan extension context. One important question, coming
from some mouse work, is whether resveratrol keeps the organism young
or just prevents death. We have some nice markers of a "young" brain
which can use to show whether it is keeping the brain young, restoring
it to a young state, or just preventing further neurodegeneration.

Its effect on muscle loss with age, liver and kidney tumour incidence
would also be interesting.

Well, that is my story... I would love to get hold of some antibodies
to those epitopes to test on guentheri sections. The cost of
antibodies here in Sount Africa are astronomical! I can't afford to
blow R7000 on an anitbody to see if it works.

Kind regards
-- 
Tyrone Genade
http://tgenade.freeshell.org
email: tgenade <@t> freeshell.org
tel: +27-84-632-1925 (c)
********************************************************************************
"For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all."
        1 Timothy 2:5-6