Their electrophysiological behavior may serve as indicator of chronic ethanol effects on the cerebellum. Here, we studied the effects of ethanol consumption through breastfeeding on motor behavior, histology and PCs electrophysiology. Mice with different maternal drinking regimen (ethanol, E or sucrose, S) during prenatal (E/and S/) and postnatal period (/E and/S) were compared. Motor performance in the runway and rotarod tests Blasticidin S price was significantly worse in mice exposed to ethanol prenatally (E/E and E/S) than in mice exposed to sucrose (S/S), with a limited influence,

if any, of mother regimen during lactation (E/S vs E/E). A loss of 20-25% of PCs was found for both E/S and E/E compared to S/S mice but PC numbers were similar in S/E and S/S. Mean PC spontaneous simple spike firing rate and rhythmicity were higher in E/S and E/E than in S/S but there was no difference between S/E and S/S. Complex spike frequency was similar in all groups. In contrast, complex spike duration and the related pause induced on the simple spike firing were shorter in E/E and in E/S, but no difference was found between S/E and S/S. We conclude that cerebellar dysfunction induced by maternal ethanol consumption in mice depends

upon the drinking regimen during pregnancy and not during lactation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Stochasticity is one of the most important properties in gene expression. Noise originates from two sources: Bindarit research buy thermal fluctuation inherent in the system (intrinsic noise) and variabilities in factors external to the system that usually result to the fluctuation in the kinetic parameters (extrinsic noise). This paper studies analytically the stationary fluctuation of the number of protein molecules through a mathematical model involving both sources of noises. The results in this paper show that the two sources of noises interlock to each other to generate total fluctuation

in protein numbers. In particular, the extrinsic noises effect the total fluctuation in multiple ways, including the extrinsic fluctuation, the correlation with intrinsic noise, the alternation of the time averaging (-)-p-Bromotetramisole Oxalate of transcription and translation. and the amplification of the total fluctuation by an impact factor. The impact factor is pronounced when the fluctuations in the degradation rates of mRNA or protein are large. Moreover, the extrinsic noise to the translational rate generates large fluctuation when the translational efficiency is too low. which is contrast to the translational bursting in high translational efficiency because of intrinsic noise. These results suggest that it is important to control the mRNA and protein degradation rate as well as the translational efficiency in order to attenuate the fluctuation in gene expression in the present of both intrinsic and extrinsic noises. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.