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NOVEL GENE TRANSCRIPTS EXPRESSED IN DEVELOPING
SENSORY NEOCORTEX IN THE MOUSE
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The connective patterns of mammalian neocortical areas
play a fundamental role in defining their characteristic functions.
The mechanisms that underlie the development of these connectivity patterns
are not well understood however. We are interested in identifying novel
genes and gene products that may be involved in the development of neocortical
areas. To do this we used a high-density DNA microarray to detect expressed
sequence tags (ESTs) that are differentially expressed between the somatosensory
and visual cortices in early postnatal mice. Total RNA was extracted
from tissue removed from the presumptive somatosensory and visual cortices
of postnatal day (P)0-1 Black 6 mice. Biotinylated cRNA was then produced
via cDNA synthesis and in vitro transcription reactions. Four
separately prepared samples from each area were hybridized to a microarray
containing multiple oligos corresponding to 12,000 ESTs. In analysis
of the results, we identified ESTs that fulfilled 3 criteria: apppropriate
absence/presence call, difference call, and had a fold change greater
than 2 for at least 3 of the 4 pairs of samples examined. We found 19
ESTs in which these criteria were met, 10 of which are more highly expressed
in the visual cortex than in the somatosensory cortex, and 9 of which
are more highly expressed in the somatosensory cortex than in the visual
cortex. The differential expression of many of these genes between the
cortical regions has been confirmed by semi-quantitative PCR. We are
currently examining the temporal and areal expression patterns of the
genes by in situ hybridization.
Supported by: NIH EY11512 and NS39022 to MS and MH58880 and NS32925 to ST. |
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