Endocrine Abstracts

Research in the field of reproductive biology is largely based on informative mouse models. Almost all of these mouse models (~99%) exhibit an unfavourable reproductive phenotype - these mouse models are subfertile or infertile in one or possibly both sexes. In contrast, the number of animal models that show an enhanced reproductive phenotype is extremely rare. Nevertheless, these mouse models could be very informative in identifying mechanisms and pathways associated with enh...

Animal models are valuable tools in fertility research. Worldwide, there are more than 1000 transgenic or knockout mouse models available showing a reproductive phenotype; almost all of them exhibit an infertile or at least subfertile phenotype. By contrast, animal models revealing an improved fertility phenotype are barely described. We developed two outbred mouse models exhibiting a ‘high-fertility’ phenotype. These mouse lines were generated via selection over a t...

Introduction: Thyroid hormones (TH) are essential regulators of metabolism and increase energy expenditure (EE). Mitochondria-rich brown adipose tissue (BAT) is specialised in thermogenesis and significantly contributes to EE. BAT contains essential components of TH action but TH transporters like MCT8 have not been characterised so far. As direct effects on O2 consumption and mitochondrial action have not been investigated before we tested MCT8 expression and direct effects o...