Volume 24, No 3, Mar 2014

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 24 Issue 3, March 2014: 380-382   |  Open Access

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Generation of transgenic golden Syrian hamsters

Mingming Gao^1,*, Baoyu Zhang^2,*, Jinjiao Liu¹, Xin Guo¹, Haibo Li¹, Tao Wang¹, Zifu Zhang³, Jiawei Liao¹, Nathan Cong¹, Yuhui Wang¹, Liqing Yu⁴, Dong Zhao² and George Liu¹

¹Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Key Laboratory of Molecular Cardiovascular Sciences, Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China
²Department of Endocrinology, Lu He Teaching Hospital of the Capital Medical University, Beijing 101149, China
³Center for Molecular Biology Laboratory and Department of Animal Science, Xinyang College of Agriculture and Forestry, Xinyang Yangshan new district 24 new street, Xinyang, Henan 464000, China
⁴Department of Animal and Avian Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA Correspondence: George Liu, E-mail: georgeliu@bjmu.edu.cn;(zdoc66@126.com)

Golden Syrian hamsters are small rodents, but they display many features that resemble the physiology and metabolism of humans. Hamsters have been widely used in many research areas, including carcinogenesis1, reproduction2, virology3, diabetes4 and cardiovascular diseases5. With respect to lipid and glucose metabolism, hamsters, like humans, exhibit high levels of cholesteryl ester transport protein (CETP), intestinal-only ApoB editing, low levels of hepatic low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor activity6 and a high glycemic response to dietary fructose7, all of which are not observed in other rodents such as mice and rats. Consequently, hamsters, like humans, exhibit enhanced susceptibility to atherosclerosis (AS) and diabetes8, which led to the widespread use of hamsters in studies on AS and diabetes.

10.1038/cr.2014.2

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