Abstract
The matricellular protein Wnt-induced secreted protein 1 (WISP1) is the fourth member of the CCN family of proteins, which has been shown to affect tissues of the musculoskeletal system. In the context of the musculoskeletal disorder osteoarthritis, our lab studied the function of CCN4/WISP1 in joint tissues, including synovium and cartilage, using both gain- and loss-of-function approaches. In mice, this was done by genetic engineering and recombination to generate mice deficient in CCN4/WISP1 protein. Various experimental models of osteoarthritis with different characteristics were induced in these mice. Moreover, CCN4/WISP1 levels in joints were experimentally increased by adenoviral transfections. Osteoarthritis pathology was determined using histology, and the effect of different CCN4/WISP1 levels on gene expression was evaluated in individual tissues. Effects of high levels of CCN4/WISP1 on chondrocytes were studied with an in vitro chondrocyte pellet model. In this chapter, we describe the procedures to conduct these experiments.
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Acknowledgments
The work presented here was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, NIDCR (Funding number 1 Z01 DE000379-21), and was financially supported by a grant from the Dutch Arthritis Foundation (Grant Number 08-1-309), a short-term fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Organization (Grant Number ASTF 578-2014), and by the ZonMW/VENI Research Program (project number 09150161810015), which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
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van den Bosch, M.H.J., Blaney Davidson, E.N. (2023). Analysis of CCN4/WISP1 Effects on Joint Tissues Using Gain- and Loss-of-Function Approaches. In: Takigawa, M. (eds) CCN Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2582. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2744-0_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2744-0_26
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