Genome wide gene expression analysis of acutely injured primary mouse neurons

We aimed at identifying a common transcriptional response of neurons to acute injury by conducting a RNA-Seq analysis on primary mouse neurons. We performed parallel damaging of cultured neurons by applying oxygen-glucose deprivation (OGD) as model for cerebral ischemia as well as excitotoxicity induced by the glutamate receptor agonist kainic acid (KA) as an in vitro model amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and epilepsy. For each of the assays, we determined the experimental conditions in which 20% of the cultured cells died due to an 8-hour treatment. In suggesting a convergence of insult-specific upstream factors on shared downstream signals, we assessed the intersection of the conditions and identified 318 statistically significant transcripts with similar regulation in the two in vitro assays 12 samples in total: 3 OGD; 3 OGD control; 3 KA; 3 KA control