Gene expression in the placenta, and cerebral cortex of the brain of offspring mice; effect of maternal exposure to carbon black nanoparticle and ascorbic acid pre-treatment

To investigate the effects of administration of carbon black nanoparticle (CB-NP) to pregnant mice on the brain development in infantile mice, we have employed whole-genome microarray expression profiling to identify genes which show dose-dependent differential expression with astrogliosis in the frontal cortex of offspring mice. Some pregnant mice were pretreated with ascorbic acid to investigate the mechanism underlying the CB-NP effect. In addition to the frontal cortex of offspring mice who were exposed to CB-NP maternally, placenta was also subjected to the analysis to investigate the mechanism. Pregnant mice were intranasally exposed to 0, 2.9, 15, 73, or 95 micro gram of CB-NP (Printex 90) per kg (body weight) on gestational days　(GDs) 5 and 9. Some pregnant mice were treated with intraperitoneal injection of ascorbic acid (500 mg/kg) at 1 h before the CB-NP instillation (95 μg/kg). Placentae were collected from pregnant dams on GD 13. Dissected cerebral cortex were collected from 6- and 12-week-old offspring mice. Comparisons among groups were made by one-color method with normalized data from Cy3 channels for data analysis.