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Updated: May 31, 2026
Laser Capture Microdissection of Enriched Populations of Neurons or Single Neurons for Gene Expression Analysis After Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: April 10, 2013
UV-laser microdissection and mRNA expression analysis of individual neurons from postmortem Parkinson's disease
Jan Gründemann1, Falk Schlaudraff, Birgit Liss
1Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, UK.
Abstract:
Cell specificity of gene expression analysis is essential to avoid tissue sample related artifacts, in particular when the relative number of target cells present in the compared tissues varies dramatically, e.g., when comparing dopamine neurons in midbrain tissues from control subjects with those from Parkinson's disease (PD) cases. Here, we describe a detailed protocol that combines contact-free UV-laser microdissection and quantitative PCR of reverse-transcribed RNA of individual neurons from postmortem human midbrain tissue from PD patients and unaffected controls. Among expression changes in a variety of dopamine neuron marker, maintenance, and cell-metabolism genes, we found that α-synuclein mRNA levels were significantly elevated in individual neuromelanin-positive dopamine midbrain neurons from PD brains when compared to those from matched controls.
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