RE: RE: Mouse Blood "Quick breeers" should be "quick breeders". Only 3 week gestation, litter sizes of 6-12 pups. Fertile by 7-8 weeks. Anyways, two of the biggest lipoprotein/cholesterol metabolism quirks between mice and humans are:
1) Mice can consume A HUGE amount of dietary cholesterol w/o ill effect. They have evolved ways to sense the dietary cholesterol and to activate genes that help rid it from their bodies. Therefore, one needs to other dietary or genetic tricks to circumvent this if one is using mice as an atherosclerotic model.
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2) Mice have very low levels of LDL and very high levels of HDL. To get around this, researchers often knockout the gene for the LDL receptor (that binds LDL and takes it into the cell).
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One last comment Trussell. I don't know what you mean by red blood cell/RBC biology/metabolism in your previous posts. I think you are refering to lipoprotein metabolism (LDL, HDL, etc), which are not cells. Or perhaps you are referring to atherosclerotic plaque formation, which is complex mix of cells. However most of these involved in plaque formation are monocyte/macrophages and endothelial cells, not RBCs.