Dr. Greg Smith (Assistant Professor, Genetics) and Dr. Samir Kelada (Associate Professor, Genetics) recently published a paper titled “A new mouse model for ozone health effects research” in Environmental Health Perspectives.
Drs. Smith and Kelada’s work identifies a strain of the Collaborative Cross (CC) mouse population as a new and improved model system to study the effects of acute and repeated exposure to ambient air pollutant ozone (O3). Our population is experiencing increasing exposure to O3, and O3 exposure is associated with adverse respiratory health outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms for how O3 exposure results in adverse pulmonary health is critical to prevention strategies and development of treatments. Experiments outlined in this paper show that the new CC mouse model overcomes some of the limitations of existing rodent models, specifically enhanced sensitivity, and more human-like thermoregulatory response. Future studies utilizing this model system provide an opportunity to characterize the mechanisms by which exposure to O3 causes adverse health effects.
The full paper can be found here.