miRNA expression profiles in the dorsal striatum of a mouse model of nicotine withdrawal

Nicotine withdrawal can diversely affect brain gene expression patterns. In the brain, the dorsal striatum is a hub of nicotine dependence. Previous studies have shown that nicotine dependence leads to functional alterations in the dorsal striatum. miRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that regulates cellular functions and dysfunctions. Here, we performed small RNA sequencing from the dorsal striatum of mice at 7 days after nicotine withdrawal. Our results show that nicotine withdrawal does not notably impact miRNA expression profile in the dorsal striatum, but a few miRNAs were significantly altered in response to nicotine withdrawal. These results suggest that nicotine withdrawal has a small but significant impact on the miRNA expression profile in the mouse dorsal striatum. Overall design: 7-weeks-old C57BL/6N mice were used for experimentation. For modeling nicotine withdrawal, three mice were injected with the nicotine solution (0.5 mg/kg, 10 ml/kg, i.p.) once daily for three days, and then were injected with the mecamylamine solution (3.0 mg/kg, 10 ml/kg, i.p.) 24 hours after the last nicotine injection to precipitate nicotine withdrawal. Control mice received saline injection. One week after the last injection, mice were sacrificed and the dorsal striatum was isolated via cryosection. Total RNA was isolated by Trizol extraction.