神经生物学

The protein truncation test (PTT) (1–3), also known as the in vitro coupled transcription/ translation synthesis assay, was designed as a tool to detect mutations that lead to premature translational termination. It was originally developed to screen for mutations in the dystrophin (DMD) g ...

Prion disease represents a group of transmissible neurodegenerative disorders that include scrapie in sheep and goats, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Gerstmann-Str�ussler-Scheinker syndrome, fatal familial insomnia, a ...

The ability to generate antibodies that recognize a given protein relies on that protein’s “antigenicity”, i.e., its ability to appear foreign to the host immune system. Thus, proteins that are highly conserved among species are often poor antigens when used for immunization (1). This lack of imm ...

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by the development of widespread hamartomas affecting most organs including the brain, heart, skin, kidney, lung, and eyes. Involvement of the brain is associated with some of the most severe clinical pro ...

Protein studies are of utmost importance for enhancing our understanding of genotype:phenotype correlations, as well as for diagnostic purposes. This is particularly true for the study of neuromuscular diseases, where defects in protein expression directly contribute to the eth ...

The use of formaldehyde as a reagent for fixing tissue was first identified over a century ago (1), and because of its efficacy in a broad range of situations, at varying concentrations and with virtually all tissues, it has remained one of the most widely used fixatives. Formaldehyde is a reactive elec ...

The application of in situ hybridization for the detection of neuropeptide mRNA has made a very significant contribution to the understanding of fundamental mechanisms of gene expression in neural tissues. First, as a powerful tool for analyzing the pattern of spatial and temporal expre ...

Ion-pair reversed-phase liquid chromatography (LC), as introduced by Johansson et al. in 1978 (1) is still the most widely used separation technique for analysis of the biogenic amines. It is usually coupled with electrochemical detection (ECD). The use of microbore LC was introduced by Scott ...

Microdialysis is a well-established sampling method for collecting neurotransmitters from the brains of freely moving rats (1; see also Chapter 19). To measure levels of amino acid transmitters in the microdialysates requires very sensitive methods of analysis owing to the subpicog ...

The diversity of neuropeptide transmitters is fairly large, as compared to other, “classical” neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine and glutamate. Currently, immunocytochemistry and in situ hybridization are the methods of choice to map neuropeptide expression patterns ...

Microdialysis is a frequently used technique to collect continuously in vivo various endogenous chemical substances from the extracellular space of discrete brain regions. In comparison to other sampling methods (such as the push-pull technique), microdialysis causes only min ...

The brain-slice technique has been utilized in electrophysiological, morphological, biochemical, and pharmacological studies of almost all brain structures. A search of the literature between 1991 and 1995 on the Ovid Medline revealed 4387 entries that used the brain-slice techn ...

Electrochemical techniques detect materials by oxidizing them in solution at a positively polarized “working” electrode. The oxidized material gives up electrons that are collected by the working electrode and generate a current flow through it. The detection of this current is the ba ...

Thin slices of brain are commonly used to study regulation of neurotransmission in the central nervous system (CNS). In most of these studies, experiments are performed using brain slices soon after their preparation. Thin brain slices have limited viability: Unless special culture con ...

The development of in vitro brain slice and isolated neuron techniques has greatly facilitated detailed studies of the electrophysiology of a wide range of neuronal types in the adult and neonatal vertebrate central nervous system (CNS). Particularly advantageous are the greater mec ...

Apoptosis plays a crucial role in tissue sculpturing during development and in the maintenance of a steady state in continuously renewing tissues. It is now becoming increasingly clear that apoptosis also contributes to cell death in many different pathological situations, includi ...

Synaptosomes were first isolated by Whittaker (1) in 1958 and identified by electron microscopy as detached synapses 2 yr later (2). Synaptosomes are sealed particles that contain small, clear vesicles and sometimes larger densecore vesicles, indicating their presynaptic origin. O ...

During development of the retina, a number of different cell types are produced in excess and then undergo programmed cell death (Young, 1984). Retinal ganglion cells, which are the tertiary neurons whose axons make up the optic nerve and provide connectivity between the eye and higher centers in ...

Despite recent scientific advances, the mechanisms inducing neuronal death in many human brain diseases remain unknown. Selective neuronal vulnerability, often with slowly developing loss of neurons, is a common feature of neurodegenerative disorders, infectious CNS disea ...

Apoptosis is a form of regulated cell death, characterized by a series of morphological alterations including cell shrinkage, chromatin condensation, pyknosis of the nucleus, and multistep chromatin degradation (see references in Bonfoco et al., 1995 and in Ankarcrona et al., 1995). The l ...