Blood characteristics of zebra finches following exposure to artificial light at night
Dominoni, D. (2024). Blood characteristics of zebra finches following exposure to artificial light at night. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/55f10059-82c0-4216-a004-e6d690d628e1
This dataset contains measurements of four physiological parameters measured in blood samples collected from zebra finches held in indoor cages over a period of 4 months. We measured four parameters: glucose concentration, non-enzymatic anti-oxidant capacity, lipid peroxidation and relative telomere length. Zebra finches were held in groups separated into three different treatments: a control group where birds were held under natural light-dark cycles, a group where birds were exposed to dim artificial light at night during the entire night (FLAN) and a group where birds where partially exposed to artificial light at night, between dusk and midnight (PLAN). Samples were taken at the start, mid-term, and end of the experiment.
After collection, one drop of blood was used to measure glucose concentration via a glucose strip test. The remaining blood was kept on ice, immediately brought to a laboratory, where it was centrifuged to separate red blood cells and plasma. These were transferred into two separate tubes and stored at -80 until further analysis. Plasma samples were used to analyse non-enzymatic anti-oxidant capacity using the Oxy-test and a lipid peroxidation marker, MDA, using mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The red blood cells were used to measure relative telomere length using a real-time RT-qPCR assay.
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre