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The role of microglia and astrocytes in Alzheimer's disease
Pospíšilová, Eva ; Telenský, Petr (advisor) ; Svoboda, Jan (referee)
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease that affects the central nervous system and is characterized mainly by problems with memory abilities. With the more aging population, the number of patients with this disease is gradually increasing, so Alzheimer's disease research is becoming one of the main priorities of today's health care. Although the research has been going on for more than a century, the exact causes of the Alzheimer's disease are still unclear. For a long time, the main role was attributed to the pathology of amyloid β and tau protein, the basic pathophysiological features of this disease, but in recent years, it has become clear that microglia and astrocytes also play an important role. These glial cells affect the amount of amyloid β and the hyperphosphorylated tau protein, but they are also crucial for maintaining homeostasis of the central nervous system. Activation of microglia and astrocytes in Alzheimer's disease can lead to disruption of the physiological functions of these neuroglia, and thus to problems with the removal of amyloid and tau protein, but also to the induction of chronic neuroinflammation. This work aims to summarize and organize the basic knowledge about the role of microglia and astrocytes in Alzheimer's disease, while focusing mainly on their role...
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The role of adipose tissue in the whole-body energy metabolism in mice with different genetic background
Funda, Jiří ; Janovská, Petra (advisor) ; Pecina, Petr (referee) ; Žurmanová, Jitka (referee)
Adipose tissue greatly contributes to the maintenance of the whole-body energy homeostasis. White adipose tissue (WAT) is the most important storage of metabolic energy in the body, while brown adipose tissue (BAT) enables the body to survive in cold environment by transforming metabolic energy to heat. Both WAT and BAT have a critical role in the control of systemic levels of fatty acids, which is necessary for the maintenance of the energy homeostasis and for the prevention of lipotoxic damage of non-adipose tissues. Abundant lipid accumulation can lead to the development of obesity, which is often accompanied by metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes and by the impairment of adipose tissue metabolic functions. Healthy adipose tissue prevents from the development of metabolic disorders associated with obesity by buffering the excess of nutrients. The key processes for efficient buffering of fatty acids are futile triacylglycerols/fatty acid cycling (TAG/FA cycling) and fatty acid oxidation. These processes occur in both WAT and BAT and their rates are largely affected by a set of transcriptional regulators, especially peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) and their coactivators. Bioactive molecules such as hormones, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) or pharmaceutics such as...
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