, 2010). To confirm that this advantage applies to Purkinje cells, we sought to molecularly perturb their early developmental processes by IUE. The ataxic mouse mutant staggerer is caused by a deletion in the gene encoding RORα1 (Sidman et al., 1962; Hamilton et al.,

1996). As RORα1 lacking Ixazomib chemical structure the putative ligand-binding domain (RORα1DN) serves as a dominant-negative mutant in cultured muscle cells (Lau et al., 1999, 2004) (Fig. 5A), we introduced two plasmids, pCAG-RORα1DN-HA, in which HA-tagged RORα1DN was placed under the CAG promoter, and pCAG-EGFP, into Purkinje cells by IUE at E11.5. The mice were fixed at P9, and sagittal sections at the vermis were immunostained for calbindin and HA to visualize Purkinje cells and RORα1DN, respectively.

Confocal microscopy showed that almost all the control calbindin-positive Purkinje cells expressing EGFP had single primary dendrites (96.2%, 102 of 106 cells; Fig. 5B and C). By contrast, only half of the calbindin-positive Purkinje cells expressing EGFP and RORα1DN-HA had a single primary dendrite (49.5%, 50 of 101 cells; P < 0.0001 vs. control, χ2 test), and www.selleckchem.com/products/ABT-263.html the remaining cells had from two to five primitive dendrites (Fig. 5B and C). Furthermore, while all the control Purkinje cells expressing EGFP were arranged in a monolayer together with non-transfected Purkinje cells, a small number of Purkinje cells expressing RORα1DN-HA (six of 101) were mislocalized to the granular layer (Fig. 5B, arrowheads). These phenotypes observed in Purkinje cells expressing RORα1DN-HA were reminiscent of those observed in staggerer Purkinje cells (Soha & Herrup, 1995; Nakagawa et al., 1998). These results clearly indicate that certain

staggerer phenotypes can be mimicked by the IUE-mediated expression of dominant-negative RORα1 in single Purkinje cells during early development. Although IUE has several advantages as a method for transferring genes into neurons in vivo, it has never been applied Ponatinib chemical structure to cerebellar Purkinje cells, key neurons for regulating cerebellar functions. In the present study, we showed that Purkinje cell progenitors at E11.5 could be most efficiently and preferentially transfected by IUE, by properly adjusting the angle and direction of the electrodes (Fig. 1). Electrophysiological analyses indicated that the electroporated Purkinje cells maintained normal membrane properties, synaptic responses and synaptic plasticity at P28 (Fig. 2). We also showed that simultaneous expression of three different fluorescent proteins (Fig. 4) and expression of a large gene (Bassoon; Fig. S4) could be successfully achieved by IUE in Purkinje cells. In addition, by using three plasmids encoding the L7 promoter and an inducible Cre/Lox system, we could achieve temporal and Purkinje-cell-specific transgene expression (Fig. 3).