实验仪器使用技术

This chapter is concerned with the question, “Now that I’ve isolated a cDNA clone, what do I do with it?” The discussion is directed particularly at the analysis of clones of mRNAs encoding proteins of unknown identity that have been selected by procedures such as subtractive hybridization (see ch ...

The focus of this chapter is on human gene mapping, but in principle, the information applies to mapping in other mammals, including other primates and rodents. Gene mapping is the discipline that assigns genes to chromosomes and parts of chromosomes. There has been recent rapid progress in mapp ...

Reports of the mapping and cloning of genes appear regularly in the major newspapers and lay magazines. The catalog of mapped and cloned human genes is being produced biannually as the report of the Human Gene Mapping workshops. In the latest report (McAlpine et al., 1988 14), over 1200 genes were listed, ...

The introduction of cloned genes into cells has greatly increased our knowledge of the factors that regulate the transcription of these genes and of the function of the proteins that they encode. Recently, techniques have been developed that allow the incorporation of cloned genes into the ge ...

Retrovirus vectors are extremely versatile tools that have been used in a wide range of systems. They have recently been employed in studies of developmental neurobiology and show great promise for future work in the neurosciences . Although several features contribute to the popularity ...

The past decade has witnessed an ever-increasing understanding of the involvement of peptides in diverse physiological functions, including the perception of pain, regulation of the enteric and autonomic nervous systems, body temperature control, and memory retention. Over the s ...

Glycosylation is one of the most common covalent modifications of proteins. It is not normally a reversible phenomenon and does not play a role in regulation of protein activity. Both glycoproteins and glycolipids are especially abundant in the plasma membrane of eukaryotic cells where the ...

Electrophysiological studies of the brain in mammals have made extensive use of immobilized preparations. Experimental animals are commonly anesthetized or immobilized by curare or by section of the brain stem (cerveau isol�) (Bremer, 1935) or spinal cord at level CI (enc�phale isol�) (B ...

Although central manipulations with electrical and chemical stimulation techniques are invaluable for investigating mechanisms of brain function, the use of this approach is often criticized for the “nonphysiological” nature of such interventions. This criticism mainly a ...

Identifying receptors associated with complex neuronal processes such as arousal, attention, and pain sensation is dependent on techniques for probing the consequences of transmitter release and receptor activation in vivo.However, over the last 15 yr there has been shift in focus to ...

Neural transplantation is a surgical technique that has widespread applications in modern neurobiology. Although there have been sporadic attempts at transplanting neural tissues into the brains of adult mammals since the late nineteenth century, the conditions for achieving r ...

Animal models of psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression attempt to represent some aspect of the etiology, symptomatology, or treatment of these disorders, in order to facilitate their scientific study (Treit, 1994; Mineka, 1985; Marks, 1987; Willner, 1994). Within this bro ...

Of primary concern to an investigator of neurological disorders is that of the selection of the most relevant animal model to achieve his or her research goals. According to Kornetsky (1977), three different types of animal models are typically used in medical research. Homologous models are t ...

Drugs of abuse are remarkable in that they are capable of exerting powerful and persistent control over behavior. As such, it is not surprising that the distribution, acquisition, and consumption of drugs of abuse continues to pose a major social, economic, and medical problem affecting incre ...

Schizophrenia is a group of illnesses of unknown origin with a yearly prevalence of 0.4–0.8% in the general population (Dohrenwend, 1980). Schizophrenia is characterized by a spectrum of symptoms that are commonly grouped into positive (including hallucinations, incoherence, delu ...

Before the advent of the thalidomide tragedy, it had often been assumed that the maternal biosystems of hepatic detoxification and metabolism, together with the placental barrier, acted as a shield and were a natural protection for the embryo from any maternal exposure to drugs. As subsequent ...

The value of in vivo electrophysiological studies for revealing information about peptidergic neurons and peptide actions has been discussed by Ferguson and Renaud in this volume. Nevertheless, carrying out pharmacological studies in vivo raises a number of problems with respect to ...

The aim of this chapter is to describe the usefulness of relatively simple model systems to study the roles played by neuropeptides in the mediation of adaptive and homeostatic behaviors. In particular, we will discuss some of the experimental approaches to exploit the unique characterist ...

In theory only one excitatory and one inhibitory transmitter should be sufficient to operate the nervous system. Therefore the recent discovery that, besides an already large number of well-established classical neurotransmitters, many small peptides are also capable of convert ...

The discovery that many peptide hormones previously identified in endocrine glands and/or in the endocrine brain (H�kfelt et al., 1980) are also present in central and peripheral neurons has unexpectedly increased the list of potential messengers participating in neuronal communi ...