Gene profiling of laser-microdissected brain regions and individual cells in drug abuse and schizophrenia research

Abstract

Application of transcriptomics approaches to accurately dissected anatomically defined brain regions and individual neuronal populations remains a central focus of current neurobiological investigations. A vast selection of methods and commercial products are currently available that allow one to implement routine gene quantitation and profiling from laser-microdissected brain regions, subregions, and neuronal populations. The present chapter reviews laser microdissection strategies for gene expression analyses, strategies for RNA extraction, reverse transcriptase-coupled PCR (RT-PCR), and target preparation for microarray analyses that are in use in our labs.