University of Wisconsin – Madison

The following protocol outlines the process of isolating, ventilating and instrumenting mouse lungs to measure steady or pulsatile pulmonary vascular pressure-flow relationships in order to quantify the effects of blood flow, airflow, airway changes and vascular changes on right ventricular afterload.

Glass wool filters have been used to concentrate waterborne viruses by a number of research groups around the world. Here we show a simple approach for constructing glass wool filters and demonstrate the filters are also effective in concentrating waterborne viral, bacterial and protozoan pathogens.

To complement commonly used methods to study TRPV4’s, two methods are described: Its mechanosensitivity can be studied by Ca²⁺-aequorin luminometry in transgenic yeast upon hypo-osmotic challenge. It can also be examined in TRPV4-RNA injected Xenopus oocytes by whole-cell two-electrode voltage clamp or patch clamp in on-cell or excised mode.