Core--Mouse physiology

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The goal of this Core is to provide efficient physiological characterization of transgenic mice in order to aid multi-disciplinary research projects relevant to the collaborative RO1 applications for this SCOR. The advent of gene-targeting and transgenic-techniques allowing for tissue-specific manipulations has rapidly shifted the focus of basic cardiovascular research from studying cellular and subcellular systems to the whole organ. With genetic knowledge and technologies being most advanced in the mouse, and miniaturized systems to study murine organ physiology becoming increasingly available, this species has emerged as the favorable model system for cardiovascular physiology, pathology, and developmental biology. Because the generation of transgenic rats, rabbits and pigs has turned out to be much more difficult, time consuming, and expensive than initially expected, it can be predicted that the importance of mouse model systems in cardiovascular pathophysiology will further increase in the future. The Cardiovascular Division of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has made a major commitment to become one of the leading research centers focusing on the murine cardiac molecular biology and physiology. Accordingly, we have established the Mouse Physiology Core Laboratory to provide centralized service and training facilities that will ensure the ability of each participating investigator of the RFA to characterize transgenic and gene-targeted mice for their research. The Mouse Physiology Core provides state-of-the-art diagnostics for characterizing murine cardiovascular physiology, including isolated heart preparations with Ca2+ detection, hemodynamics measurements, electrocardiograms and arrhythmia monitoring. The proposed Core will enable accomplishment of multi-disciplinary research goals of this RFA that cannot be addressed by a traditional RO1 framework.