Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry

2 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Neuroscience

Optimized Analysis of DNA Methylation and Gene Expression from Small, Anatomically-defined Areas of the Brain

Marc Bettscheider¹, Arleta Kuczynska¹, Osborne Almeida¹, Dietmar Spengler¹

A streamlined workflow to study DNA methylation and gene expression changes upon early-life stress is shown. Starting from maternal separation of newborn mice and isolation of discrete brain tissues, we represent a protocol to simultaneously isolate DNA and RNA from brain tissue punches for subsequent bisulfite sequencing and RT-PCR analysis.

Behavior

Longitudinal Two-Photon Imaging of Dorsal Hippocampal CA1 in Live Mice

Alessandro F. Ulivi¹, Tim P. Castello-Waldow¹, Ghabiba Weston^1,2, Long Yan³, Ryohei Yasuda³, Alon Chen^1,4, Alessio Attardo¹

¹Dept. of Stress Neurobiology and Neurogenetics, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, ²Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, Ludwig Maximilians University, ³Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, ⁴Dept. of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science

This method describes a chronic preparation that allows optical access to the hippocampus of living mice. This preparation can be used to perform longitudinal optical imaging of neuronal structural plasticity and activity-evoked cellular plasticity over a period of several weeks.