Long read sequencing of mouse nucleus accumbens in chronic cocaine treatment

To better understand the transcriptome of Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) – a key brain reward region – under chronic cocaine treatment, we perform the first Iso-Seq analysis on its mRNAs to determine the full-length transcripts without assembly. Ten 8-10 week old male C57 mice were pooled to generate the RNA for sequencing. Five of the mice were given IP saline injections for 7 days, while the other 5 mice were given 20mg/kg cocaine via IP injection for 7 days. NAc were isolated one hour after the final injection and stored frozen at -80 until RNA extraction. RNA from individual mice was extracted using Qiagen RNeasy Mini kit and pooled prior to library preparation. NAc were isolated from each mouse bilaterally, so a total of 20 NAc punches were used for Iso-Seq long read sequencing.