Gua Sha, traditional Chinese therapeutic skin scraping, causes subcutaneous microvascular blood extravasation. We report a protocol of bioluminescence imaging of HO-1-luciferase transgenic mice to demonstrate that Gua Sha upregulates heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in multiple organs.
Representative Results:
The bioluminescence images in figure 1 show in vivo upregulation of HO-1 in response to Gua Sha. The graph in Figure 2 shows the quantitative temporal change over 120 hours in optical flux (photons/sec) from the whole body of the same mouse related to Gua Sha…
Figure 1. From left to right, representative images of the front view (supine) of same mouse before Gua Sha, at 18 hours, 36 hours and 120 hours post Gua Sha, respectively. After Gua Sha, one observes the progress of significant signal intensity increase in multiple organs which encompass regions of the gastrointestinal tract, the genital tract, the liver, kidneys (from the back view, not shown), and others. Please click here for a larger version of figure 1.
Figure 2. Quantitative change of flux (photons/sec) from the whole body tracked over 120 hours following Gua Sha in the same mouse of Figure 1. Please click here to see a larger version of figure 2.
Transcription of HO-1, an inducible form of heme oxygenase, is upregulated by many factors including heme, hydrogen peroxide, UV irradiation, hypoxia, and physical stresses. Whole body imaging such as the reported HO-1 bioluminescence protocol provides a quick snapshot of systemic HO-1 expression in multiple organs. In small animals, bioluminescence imaging allows high-sensitivity in-vivo real-time quantitative longitudinal optical assessment of alterations in systemic gene expression, as shown. Bioluminescence molecular imaging lowers the cost and increases the throughput of gene expression assays in small animals, making it practical to rapidly achieve the statistical power needed for investigation of complex systems biology hypothesis and to assess for systemic effects of proposed pharmaceutical and other therapeutic interventions. One limitation is low spatial resolution of the anatomy. Newer optical imaging systems that have tomographic capability would alleviate the problem. Image acquisition and registration by micro-CT or small animal MRI would help to properly identify the anatomy. Other limitations are low light penetration through tissue and the need for transgenic animals. These essentially preclude translation to larger animals or human use, but are not a significant drawback for small animal systems biology or preclinical therapeutic hypothesis testing.
The authors have nothing to disclose.
K. Wong, S.T.C. Wong are supported by the funding from Functional and Molecular Imaging Center, Brigham and Women’s hospital
K. Wong, S.T.C. Wong are supported by the Center for Biotechnology and Informatics, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College.
K.K. Kwong, I. Chen, J-Q Ren are supported by the funding from the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital.
Lenuta Kloetzer, Braden Kuo are supported by funding from the Neuroenteric Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital
The authors thank Drs. Q. Zeng and X. Xu of Optical Imaging Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital for technical help.
Material Name | Type | Company | Catalogue Number | Comment |
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Luciferin | Caliper | P/N 122796 | Previously Xenogen | |
IVIS 100 | Caliper | Previously Xenogen |