All posts by : Karin Janz

One of the main aims of our group is to research on nociceptive processes, diagnostic strategies and treatment approaches in animals.

A major challenge for veterinarians is to correctly evaluate nociception during general anaesthesia. In this context, novel strategies should be investigated.

With the financial support of the UniBern Forschungsstiftung we were able to acquire the parasympathetic tone activity (PTA)™ monitor (Fig.1). Through the analysis of the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (heart rate variability evaluation), it provides the anaesthesiologists with an index of nociception (PTA index), expressed on a scale between 0 and 100: values close to 100 indicate absence of nociception, while values below 50 suggest presence of nociception.

The present project aims at assessing the reliability of the PTA in pigs, species largely used for experimental and translational studies. Data were collected before, during, and after the application of various nociceptive stimuli, while the pigs were under propofol-based anaesthesia. Data collection has been completed, and analysis is ongoing.

The PTA index has the potential to serve as an additional tool for evaluating the nociceptive/anti-nociceptive status of animals under general anaesthesia.

Dr. med. vet. Alessandro Mirra
Anaesthesiology and Pain Therapy Section
Vetsuisse Faculty 

Correctly sized body parts are crucial for organismal function. For example, small discrepancies in limb length severely obstruct motility, and overgrowth of cardiac muscle is a prevalent cause of heart failure. The growth of different cells and organs must therefore be tightly coordinated to prevent that even small differences in growth rates amplify to large differences in size during development. How growth signals are propagated from cell to cell, and how organs integrate combinatorial signals from different tissues is a fundamental, yet poorly addressed question of high biomedical relevance. We address this question using quantitative live imaging experiments with the nematode worm C. elegans.

Specifically, we used strains expressing a green fluorescent protein in the pharynx of C. elegans and a red fluorescent protein in all cells of the body. Using a micro cultivation technique, we grew individual animals in small chambers that can be maintained on a fluorescent microscope over many days and the entire development of C. elegans. This technique allows us to precisely monitor the growth of the pharynx and the body size at high time resolution for individual animals and measure the heterogeneity in growth and size among individuals of an isogenic population. Our key finding is that there exists a molecular mechanism that coordinates the growth of the pharynx and the body, such that the relative proportions between the pharynx and the body length are very robust to even strong perturbations.

The “Nikon piezo stage” that we were able to acquire thanks to the UniBern Forschungsstiftungs’ grant, has become essential for our investigations. The piezo drive enables extremely rapid acquisition of three dimensional image stacks with minimal time delay between optical sections. This speed is crucial for our application, as the animals are not anesthetized inside the chambers and move rapidly. Thanks to the rapid acquisition, we can now effectively acquire large stacks of images and reconstruct 3-dimensional representations of the animals.

Prof. Dr. Benjamin Towbin
Institute of Cell Biology

https://izb.unibe.ch/

Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a rare hereditary disease impairing the ciliary activity and resulting in a variety of respiratory symptoms, such as neonatal respiratory distress in term-born infants, chronic rhino-sinusitis and persistent wet cough from the day of birth, and recurrent respiratory tract infections often resulting in later bronchiectasis. Mutations in more than 50 genes are known to cause defects in the structure and function of cilia. Abnormalities in the ciliary structure lead to ciliary dyskinesia, which results in an impairment of the mucociliary transport. Reduced mucociliary transport then leads to less efficient removal of respiratory pathogens from the airways. Due to the high number of potentially involved genes, the diagnosis of PCD is very challenging. There is no single gold standard test and a combination of methods has to be performed. Therefore, we would like to use computational high-speed video reflection microscopy (CRM) to assess the collective mucociliary activity in air-liquid interface (ALI) cell cultures of nasal epithelial cells derived from patients with suspicion of PCD. This approach has the potential to become the first diagnostic approach allowing to diagnose PCD in a highly accurate as well as automated and cost-effective way.

With the support of the Berne University Research Foundation we bought a reflection microscope to record the surface of ALI-cultured, differentiated cells of patients suspicious for PCD. The addition of a climate chamber furthermore enabled temperature control during experiments. The videos can be analyzed using our Cilialyzer software and we will investigate which parameters of the collective ciliary activity could discriminate reliably and sensitively between healthy and PCD. Furthermore, the microscope is used to test the potential of various drugs (e.g. cystic fibrosis modulator drugs) to improve ciliary activity and mucociliary transport in vitro.

PD Dr. Loretta Müller

Department for BioMedical Research, Lung Precision Medicine (LPM)
Pädiatrische Pulmonologie, Inselspital, Kinderklinik

Our research group focuses on the health and welfare of poultry and rabbits as it relates to their housing. To this end, one of the main themes in our research is individual variation in movement and space use within a commercial setting. Our past research shows that individuals are consistent in how they move throughout the aviary, and that individuals are distinctly different from one another. For example, some individuals are very active, moving throughout the different levels of the aviary rapidly throughout the day, while others tend to stay on one level for most of the day. However, we don’t know when distinct individual variation emerges or how it changes across the lifetime of the individual.

With the generous support of the UniBern Forschungsstiftung, we were able to purchase additional radio frequency identification (RFID) antennas to install in our rearing barn to gather positional data of chicks at one day of age. From this data, we will assess whether individuals differ in their space use right after hatch or whether differences develop slowly over the rearing period. We can then link these movement differences with overall health and welfare across their lives.

At present, we have already carried out a pilot study in our experimental barn (Figure 1) that demonstrates we are able to obtain data from chicks and that movement between chicks across the first weeks seem to be consistently different, however our validation is ongoing. We also recently installed antennas in two pens in our rearing barn and started tracking 600 chicks (300/pen) to determine movement differences in a commercial setting (Figure 2).

Drs. Michael Toscano and Matthew Petelle

ZTHZ – Center for Proper Housing: Poultry and Rabbits

VPHI – Veterinary Public Health Insitute