Primate

About: Primate is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1250 publications have been published within this topic receiving 67388 citations. The topic is also known as: the primate order & primates.

Composite pattern of circulating LH, FSH, estradiol, and progesterone during the menstrual cycle in cynomolgus monkeys.

Abstract: SummaryCirculating levels of LH, FSH, estradiol and progesterone were measured by radioimmunoassays in daily serum samples throughout the menstrual cycle of seven adult cynomolgus monkeys. The composite pattern of these hormones in cynomolgus monkeys strongly resembles that reported for rhesus monkeys, and is similar to that in the menstrual cycle of women. Thus, in the face of diminishing supplies and higher costs of rhesus monkeys, the cynomolgus monkey can also serve effectively as a model for studies in primate reproduction.The expert technical assistance and animal care by D. L. Barber, C. K. Turner, and J. Lewis, Jr., are gratefully acknowledged.

Effects of Early Rearing Environment on Immune-Responses of Infant Rhesus Monkeys

Abstract: In animals, perturbations of the rearing environment have been shown to alter behavior, cognition, and physiology, including immune responses. In order to evaluate the effect of early rearing conditions on the development of immune responses in the infant primate, several immunological measures were assessed in rhesus monkey infants, nursery-reared (NR) or mother-reared (MR), from birth to 2 years of age. Rearing in the absence of the mother affected several aspects of cellular immunity. NR monkeys had significantly lower proportions of CD8 cells and lower natural killer cell activity than did MR monkeys. In contrast, their lymphocyte proliferation responses to mitogen stimulation were higher than those of MR monkeys. An attempt to behaviorally rehabilitate the NR infants at 1 year of age did not result in a recovery of normal immune responses. This study indicates that abnormal early rearing may have long-lasting effects on the immune system, which could have health consequences later in life.

CYP2C76, a novel cytochrome P450 in cynomolgus monkey, is a major CYP2C in liver, metabolizing tolbutamide and testosterone.

Abstract: Monkeys are widely used as a primate model to study drug metabolism because they generally show a metabolic pattern similar to humans. However, the paucity of information on cytochrome P450 (P450) genes has hampered a deep understanding of drug metabolism in the monkey. In this study, we report identification of the CYP2C76 cDNA newly identified in cynomolgus monkey and characterization of this CYP2C along with cynomolgus CYP2C20, CYP2C43, and CYP2C75. The CYP2C76 cDNA contains the open reading frame encoding a protein of 489 amino acids that are only approximately 80% identical to any human or monkey P450 cDNAs. Gene and protein expression of CYP2C76 was confirmed in the liver of cynomolgus and rhesus monkeys but not in humans or the great apes. Moreover, CYP2C76 is located at the end of the CYP2C gene cluster in the monkey genome, the region of which corresponds to the intergenic region adjacent to the CYP2C cluster in the human genome, strongly indicating that this gene does not have the ortholog in humans. Among the four CYP2C genes expressing predominantly in the liver, the expression level of CYP2C76 was the greatest, suggesting that CYP2C76 is a major CYP2C in the monkey liver. Assays for the capacity of CYP2C76 to metabolize drugs using several substrates typical for human CYP2Cs revealed that CYP2C76 showed unique metabolic activity. These results suggest that CYP2C76 contributes to overall drug-metabolizing activity in the monkey liver and might account for species difference occasionally seen in drug metabolism between monkeys and humans.

Selective hippocampal damage in rhesus monkeys impairs spatial memory in an open-field test.

Abstract: The hippocampus is critical for remembering locations in a wide variety of species, including humans. However, recent findings from monkeys following selective hippocampal lesions have been equivocal. To approximate more closely the situations in which rodents and birds are tested, we used a spatial memory task in which rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) moved about freely in a large room, on a tether. We used MRI-guided stereotaxic surgery to produce selective hippocampal lesions in five monkeys, and retained five unoperated control monkeys. In the study phase of each trial of the matching-to-location task, monkeys found food in one site in an array of identical foraging sites. During the test, which occurred after a delay, monkeys could return to the site where the food had been found during study to obtain more food. In Experiment 1, normal monkeys showed a small significant tendency to return directly to a site where they had previously found food that day. Operated monkeys showed no such matching tendency. In Experiment 2, further training produced reliable matching-to-location performance in both groups at short delays, but monkeys with selective hippocampal lesions rapidly forgot the location of the food. In Experiment 3, we tested whether monkeys used a "cognitive map" to encode the location of the hidden food, by requiring them to relocate the food from a starting location different from that used during study. As a group, monkeys were more accurate than expected by chance, indicating that they did encode the rewarded location with respect to allocentric landmarks; however, both groups of monkeys were significantly worse at relocating the food when required to approach from a different location. In Experiment 4, probe trials using symmetrical test arrays found no evidence for egocentric coding of the rewarded location.