Caspase‐3 is activated following axotomy of neonatal facial motoneurons and caspase‐3 gene deletion delays axotomy‐induced cell death in rodents
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this report, we examined the possible functions of the cell death protease, caspase-3, in the axotomy-induced apoptosis of facial motoneurons in newborn rodents. Using in situ hybridization and Western blot, we found higher levels of caspase-3 mRNA and pro-caspase-3 protein expression in motoneurons of neonatal and 2-week-old rats than adult rats. Following facial motoneuron axotomy, caspase-3 mRNA and protein expression increased in motoneurons of both neonatal and adult rats. However, using an antibody directed to the activated form of the caspase-3 protease, we found that catalytically active caspase-3 was present only in axotomized neonatal motoneurons. As motoneurons in neonatal but not adult rodents are susceptible to axotomy-induced apoptosis, we hypothesized that caspase-3 may play a role in their demise. To determine the necessity of caspase-3 activation in axotomy-induced apoptosis, we counted the number of surviving motoneurons at 4 and 7 days following axotomy in wild type mice and caspase-3 gene-deleted mice. There were nearly three times more surviving motoneurons in caspase-3 gene-deleted mice than in wild type mice at both 4 days (mean 1074 vs. 464, P<0.005) and 7 days (mean 469 vs. 190, P<0.005) following injury, indicating a slower rate of death. Examination of the dying motoneurons using TUNEL staining (for fragmented DNA) and bisbenzimide staining (for nuclear morphology) revealed incomplete nuclear condensation in caspase-3-deficient motoneurons. These results demonstrate that caspase-3 activation plays important roles in the rapid demise of axotomized neonatal motoneurons.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".