Practicable recovery of plasmids carrying cDNAs encoding anti-apoptotic factors that had been introduced by particle bombardment into 5-week-old rat hippocampal slices

Deqing Zhang, Harbhajan S. Dhillon, Mark P. Mattson, David M. Yurek, Renuka M. Prasad

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the central nervous system, neuronal cells interact with glial cells and functionally differentiate, a process which can not be reproduced in cell culture. Identification of the novel factors involved in the growth and/or rescue of the differentiated neuronal cells has been impeded by a lack of methods for selecting the genes. In this study, hippocampal slices of a 5-week old rat were transiently introduced with plasmid DNA carrying anti-apoptotic rat bcl-2 or bcl-x cDNA by a particle-bombardment transfection procedure. The plasmid DNAs were expected not to be digested in living cells. Intact plasmid DNAs were recovered by PCR amplification from the slices with bcl-2 or bcl-x cDNAs but not from slices with empty vector or bax cDNA that promotes cell death. This study proposed that a technical combination of organotypic culture and particle-bombardment transfection is profitable for identifying novel genes that promote the survival of neuronal cells. Copyright (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)62-66
Number of pages5
JournalNeuroscience Letters
Volume272
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 3 1999

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan.

Keywords

  • Apoptosis
  • Bax
  • Bcl-2
  • Bcl-x(L)
  • Hippocampal slice
  • Neurodegeneration
  • Particle-bombardment transfection

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Neuroscience (all)

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