Abstract
Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a serious neurological condition caused by liver failure, and affecting humans and companion animals. Patients suffering this multifaceted disorder present with hyperammonaemia and elevated cytokines, leading to astrocyte swelling in the CNS, ataxia, seizures, cognitive dysfunction and coma. Surgery is effective in treating the diseased liver, yet long term changes in CNS function can prevail. This interdisciplinary project (physiology & genetics) takes a genomic approach to investigate how HE affects CNS gene expression and epigenetic changes, using next generation sequencing approaches (RNA-seq/ATAC-seq) and bioinformatic analyses to identify regulatory pathways and causal networks for this life-threatening condition.
References
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