Virus-mediated gene transfer into hippocampal CA1 region restores long-term potentiation in brain-derived neurotrophic factor mutant mice.

作者：Martin Körte, Oliver Griesbeck, Christopher A. Gravel, Patrick Carroll, Volker Staiger, H. Thoenen, Tobias Bonhoeffer · 发表于：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 年份：1996 · DOI：10.1073/pnas.93.22.12547 · 被引用次数：352 · 研究领域：Nerve injury and regeneration、Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity mechanisms、Virus-based gene therapy research

Long-term potentiation (LTP) has been shown to be impaired in mice deficient in the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene, as well as in a number of other knockout animals. Despite its power the gene-targeting approach is always fraught with the danger of looking at the cumulative direct and indirect effects of the absence of a particular gene rather than its immediate function. The re-expression of a specific gene at a selective time point and at a specific site in gene-defective mutants presents a potent procedure to overcome this limitation and to evaluate the causal relationship between the absence of a particular gene and the impairment of a function in gene-defective animals. Here we demonstrate that the re-expression of the BDNF gene in the CA1 region almost completely restores the severely impaired LTP in hippocampal slices of BDNF-deficient mice. The results therefore provide strong evidence for the direct involvement of BDNF in the process of LTP.