Elsevier

Neuroscience Letters

Volume 367, Issue 2, 2 September 2004, Pages 210-212
Neuroscience Letters

Non-invasive imaging of GFAP expression after neuronal damage in mice

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2004.06.020Get rights and content

Abstract

Up-regulation of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) expression is often used as a surrogate marker of neuronal damage. We have created a transgenic mouse line that carries the luciferase gene under the transcriptional control of the mouse GFAP promoter. Biophotonic imaging was used to non-invasively detect the increase in GFAP expression after kainic acid induced neuronal cell death. We demonstrate that after kainic acid treatment, strong biophotonic signals were detected from the brain area. This correlated with both endogenous GFAP and luciferase RNA levels as well as with hippocampal cell death observed histologically. The transgenic mouse line will provide a powerful tool to dynamically monitor neuronal cell death in the living animal and will aid in the discovery and development of drugs to treat damage due to stroke and other neurodegenerative diseases.

References (15)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (100)

  • Detection of amyloid aggregation in living systems

    2020, Protein Homeostasis Diseases: Mechanisms and Novel Therapies
  • Application of mouse genetics to human disease: generation and analysis of mouse models

    2020, Rosenberg’s Molecular and Genetic Basis of Neurological and Psychiatric Disease: Volume 1
  • Bioluminescence imaging in mice with synthetic luciferin analogues

    2020, Methods in Enzymology
    Citation Excerpt :

    For example, FVB-Tg(CAG-luc,-GFP)L2G85Chco/J (CAG-luc) mice, sometimes also called “FVB-luc +” mice, express luciferase in most cells and tissues behind a synthetic CAG promoter consisting of a human CMV early enhancer fused to a hybrid chicken beta-actin/rabbit beta-globin promoter (Cao et al., 2004). FVB/N-Tg(Gfap-luc)-Xen (GFAP-luc) mice express luciferase behind a glial fibrillary acidic promoter, which is selectively expressed in astrocytes (Zhu et al., 2004). B6.129S6-Per2tm1Jt/J (mPER2::LUC) mice express a fusion protein between mouse period circadian clock 2 (mPER2) and luciferase, which reports on circadian rhythms (Yoo et al., 2004).

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text