Journal article

Viral-mediated delivery of an RXFP3 agonist into brain promotes arousal in mice

CM Smith, A Blasiak, DE Ganella, BE Chua, SL Layfield, RAD Bathgate, AL Gundlach

Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology | Published : 2013

Abstract

Anatomical and functional studies of central relaxin-3/RXFP3 systems suggest they constitute an ascending arousal network. For example, relaxin-3 knockout mice display circadian hypoactivity compared to wild type littermate controls. In studies to explore the effect of chronic RXFP3 activation on behaviour, we engineered a lentiviral construct to constitutively secrete the RXFP3 agonist, R3/I5, and express a green fluorescent protein (GFP) marker in transduced cells. Intracerebroventricular injection of the lenti-R3/I5-GFP virus (10 8 genomic copies in 2 μl) in adult C57BL/6J mice resulted in GFP expression within cells of the ventricle walls and choroid plexus over a period of 1-4 weeks, su..

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University of Melbourne Researchers