Search

In a diabetic pregnancy, an altered maternal metabolism led to increased formation of reactive α-dicarbonyls such as glyoxal (GO) and methylglyoxal (MGO) in the reproductive organs and embryos. The enzyme glyoxalase (GLO) 1 detoxifies reactive α-dicarbonyls thus protecting cells against malfunction or modifications of proteins by advanced glycated end products (AGEs). The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of a maternal insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDD) on GLO1 expression and activity in preimplantation embryos in vivo and human trophoblast cells (Ac-1M88) in vitro. Maternal diabetes was induced in female rabbits by alloxan before conception and maintained during the preimplantation period. GLO1 expression and activity were investigated in 6-day-old blastocysts from healthy and diabetic rabbits. Furthermore, blastocysts and human trophoblast cells were exposed in vitro to hyperglycaemia, GO and MGO and analysed for GLO1 expression and activity. During gastrulation, GLO1 was expressed in all compartments of the rabbit blastocyst. Maternal diabetes decreased embryonic GLO1 protein amount by approx. 30 per cent whereas the enzymatic activity remained unchanged, indicating that the specific GLO1 activity increases along with metabolic changes. In in vitro cultured embryos, neither hyperglycaemia nor MGO and GO had an effect on GLO1 protein amount. In human trophoblast cells, a stimulating effect on the GLO1 expression was shown in the highest GO concentration, only. Our data show that maternal diabetes mellitus affects the specific activity of GLO1, indicating that GLO1 was post-translationally modified due to changes in metabolic processes in the preimplantation embryos.

Because of the increasing incidence of worldwide obesity, cell culture models which enable the study of adipose tissue development are of particular importance. The murine embryonic stem cell (ESC) line CGR8 differentiates into adipocytes with a differentiation efficiency of up to 15%. A critical step for the analysis of stem cell-derived adipogenesis is the reliable separation of adipocytes. Here we report on how to (i) gently separate the cells of embryoid bodies (EBs) and (ii) identify and sort adipocytes from the rest of the heterogeneous cell mixture. Up to the present, no adipocyte specific surface marker is known for fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS). After separation we employed two independently existing FACS methods for adipocyte cell sorting. These methods are based on Nile red staining and granularity. For stem cell-derived adipocytes only the combination of both methods led to a reliable, efficient, and highly reproducible FACS analysis, as shown by the presence and absence of adipocyte specific markers in positively and negatively sorted cells. ' 2010 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry