Noradrenergic activation of immediate early genes in rat cerebral cortex

Previous studies have shown that stimulation of adrenergic receptors in the brain increases the expression of the immediate early gene (IEG), c-fos, in vivo (Mol. Brain Res., 6 (1989) 39-45). The present study was undertaken to determine whether this also holds for other IEGs which have been shown to be activated in brain cell culture by adrenergic agonists. Both yohimbine injection and stressful stimulation, two treatments causing brain norepinephrine (NE) release, were found to cause a parallel, transient activation of at least 5 IEGs (c-fos, nur77, tis-7, zif-268 and tis-21) in the rat cortex. Genes that are not immediate early (β-actin, NGF and HSP70) were found not to be affected in the interval used (6 h). The responses were mediated predominantly by β-adrenoceptors with some contribution from α₁ receptors. The parallel activation of multiple genes by noradrenergic receptors may enable the coding of different biochemical responses to the activation of different receptors.