Post-mortem gene expression from mouse brain

Every biological system interacts with the surrounding environment, both during life and after death. We investigated three concealment simulations (air exposed, water submerged, and buried) to understand how the environment can influence the post-mortem transcription to add knowledge about the biology of death and also to identify possible molecules for forensic applications. We used microarrays to detect upregulated and downregulated genes in the brains of concealed mouse (48h after death) and to identify molecular markes specifically associated to each environmental condition or the gene expression programme shared by all conditions analysed. 12 mice were used for the experiments in triplicate. All animals were euthanized by CO2 exposure at the same time and then distributed on the groups (control, exposed, submerged and buried). Full brains were macerated with liquid nitrogen and an aliquote was used for the analyses (control immediately after death and treated groups 48h after death)