Identification of differentially expressed genes in the denervated rat hippocampus by cDNA arrays.

To elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the physiological responses to injury in the central nervous system, gene expression profiles in rodent hippocampus following perforant path transection were investigated using cDNA array hybridization. Of the 8000 arrayed clones, 47 exhibited differential expression by >3-fold difference in the denervated hippocampus from control, with 15 up-regulated and 22 down-regulated. They can be functionally assigned into several classes, among which the most prominent are those coding proteins involved in macromolecules synthesis and processing. Northern blot analysis verified the validation of the aforementioned array data. These results throw some new light on the physiological responses of the hippocampus to entorhinal deafferentation at molecular level.