Core B: Animal, Cell and Tissue Culture Core

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SUMMARY: The Animal, Cell and Tissue Culture Core (Core B) is responsible for providing investigators of the Program Project (PPG) with animal models, tissues and cells necessary to achieve their specific aims. Experiments of this PPG focus on identifying mechanisms responsible for the differences in longevity between species of rodents. Rodents offer a unique opportunity for such comparative study of longevity because of the over 10-fold differences in lifespans represented within a single mammalian order. For example, short-lived rodents, such as the mouse and rat, live 3-5 years, while long-lived rodents, such as the naked mole rat, blind mole rat, grey squirrel, beaver, and porcupine have maximum lifespans ranging from 21 to 32 years. To enable the study of molecular mechanisms of longevity in these animals, it is essential to provide access to biological materials from several individuals of multiple rodent species. Core B maintains and replenishes, as needed, the collection of tissues and primary cells from over 22 species of rodents. The Core provides project investigators with tissues, cells, DNA and RNA, and performs stress treatments on animals. In addition, Core B will maintain mice, naked mole rats, blind mole rat and Damaraland mole rat colonies for the use of project investigators. Considering the effort needed to collect and establish cell cultures from non-standard organisms that are not commercially available, this centralized resource saves time and effort, and reduces costs. Core B will generate and breed mouse models with longevity interventions engineered based on the longevity mechanisms discovered by project investigators in long-lived rodent species. This includes mice overexpressing naked mole rat hyaluronan synthase 2 gene (nmrHAS2 mice), beaverized SIRT6 mice, and mice treated with hyaluronidase inhibitors. Core B will perform longevity studies with these mice and analyze the effect of interventions on health. Maintaining the centralized rodent collection standardizes culture conditions, quality control, and biological samples for use across PPG projects, improves reproducibility of results, and allows the analysis of the same individual animals by several assays and projects minimizing animal use.