Project Summary – Core B Core B (Animal Core) serves as a central resource for all animals used by all investigators in the Program Project. Core personnel are responsible for maintaining up-to-date assessments of animal requirements for all Projects. They ensure timely ordering, delivery, and proper husbandry of animals. All animal surgery is conducted and/or supervised by Core B personnel. This includes production of mid-thoracic aorta coarctation rats and mice, thymectomized rats, and appropriate sham-operated controls, most routine tissue removal and preservation for in vitro analysis, and instrumentation of rats for chronic hemodynamic monitoring. Most animals used in the Program Project have their blood pressure carefully and reliably quantified by Core B personnel either directly (radiotelemetry transmitter) or indirectly (systolic pressure by tail-cuff sphygmomanometry) as part of each experimental protocol. Daily animal husbandry, health surveillance and record keeping also are the responsibility of Core B personnel, in association with the staff of Campus Animals Resources (CAR) of Michigan State University. Core B personnel also are responsible for implementing new physiological techniques for evaluating cardiovascular function and developing new transgenic animal models that support the goals of the Program Project. A major advantage of Core B is that it facilitates the most efficient use of animals by Program Investigators. Our in vivo protocols also are designed to maximize the amount of data collected from a single animal. This is achieved through use of long-term repeated measurements of cardiovascular parameters where possible, rather than studying separate groups of rats at each time point of interest. At the end of chronic in vivo protocols, tissue samples from the animals are distributed to one or more Program investigators for further study.