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Updated: Aug 12, 2026
Using Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting to Examine Cell-Type-Specific Gene Expression in Rat Brain Tissue
Published on: May 28, 2015
Profile of genes showing increased expression following dopamine and methamphetamine exposure in an immortalized
N S Cai1, M T McCoy, J L Cadet
1Molecular Neuropsychiatry Section, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, 5500 Nathan Shock Drive, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
Abstract:
Methamphetamine (METH) is a drug of abuse with well-described neurodegenerative effects. Some of the METH-induced degenerative manifestations are thought to be due to increased dopamine (DA) release in the cytoplasm of nerve terminals and subsequent extravasation in the synaptic cleft. Using an immortalized neural cell line, we have made use of the comprehensive cDNA array technology in order to compare and contrast the molecular effects of DA and METH. We found that the two compounds do have many similar but also different effects. Since these neural cells produce no DA, these results demonstrate that many of the METH-induced responses attributed to DA might, in fact, be intrinsic to METH itself. More biochemical studies are needed to investigate DA-independent METH deleterious events in the central nervous system.
