Our group is interested in the neurodevelopmental as well as the environmental factors that influence whether or not brain tumors will form in a child. We are addressing how to obtain both brains and serum from the same embryonic mice, so we can reduce the total number of animals needed for a given study. The brains allow us to study neurodevelopment, and then the serum allows us to link those observations to systemic factors.
This protocol allows us to collect both brains and serum reproducibly from embryonic mice. We are able to obtain higher volumes of serum, and the serum is non-hemolyzed. We have recently identified that maternal obesogenic diet exposure affects neurodevelopmental phenotypes.
It increases the risk of optic pathway glioma formation in neurofibromatosis type one related mirroring models. We developed this protocol in order to determine whether these findings are related to changes in the macronutrient profiles. We will focus on the mechanism by which obesogenic diet affects neurodevelopment and increases the risk of NF1 optic pathway gliomas.
