Mazei MS, Wiley RG, Deutch AY (2000) Intracortical injection of DBH-saporin targets noradrenergic axons in the medial prefrontal cortex of the rat. Neuroscience 2000 Abstracts 639.8. Society for Neuroscience, New Orleans, LA.
Summary: The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is innervated by both dopaminergic and noradrenergic neurons. While the densities of the two types of catecholamine axons are different in subregions of the mPFC, axons of both types are present in most of the mPFC. The goal of this study was to selectively lesion noradrenergic axons in the rat mPFC while sparing dopaminergic axons, using microinjection of the immunotoxin dopamine β-hydroxylase (DBH)-saporin. DBH-saporin (10- 100 ng/μ1) was unilaterally injected into three brain regions, the mPFC, caudate-putamen (CP) and cerebellum. Rats were sacrificed 2-10 days post-injection and the lesion was characterized by tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), DBH, and norepinepherine transporter (NET) immunohistochemistry. DBH-saporin administration resulted in discrete lesions. There appeared to be a decrease in the number of immunoreactive (ir) axons after DGH-saporin infusion into the mPFC: surviving axons were swollen and dystrophic. However, the effect of DBH-saporin appears more pronounced when examining DBH-ir than with NET-ir. Intrastriatal injections of DBH-saporin did not decrease TH-ir, suggesting that dopaminergic axons were spared. Since DBH-saporin acts by entry into DBH-containing vesicles, a longer time course may be necessary to observe loss of the NET marker than DBH. Studies are in progress to examine this possibility.
Related Products: Anti-DBH-SAP (Cat. #IT-03)