Acetyl-l-carnitine up-regulates expression of voltage-dependent anion channel in the rat brain
Section snippets
Animals
Fifty-day-old male Wistar rats bred from the same litter, housed at a temperature of 22 °C, were intraperitoneally injected daily for 21 days with ALC (100 mg/kg body weight Sigma-Tau Laboratories, Pomezia, Italy, experimental group) or saline (control group), as described in a previous paper (Traina et al., 2004). The investigation has been conducted in conformity with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinky.
Subtracted cDNA library construction
Total RNA was isolated from rat brains (except cerebellum and spinal cord) of four
Results
The aim of this study was to single out genes that are differentially expressed in brains of young rats after 21 days ALC treatments. We have chosen to build the cDNA libraries from the whole brain of young healthy rats. To identify genes whose expressions were induced in response to ALC treatment in rat CNS, we used PCR-based suppression subtractive hybridization (Traina et al., 2004). In this paper, we report a finding that might be considered of particular relevance for the identification of
Discussion
The present study has singled out the influence of ALC treatment on genes expressed at mitochondrial level, already in part described in our previous paper (Traina et al., 2004). This is the first evidence reporting a modulation of expression of VDAC1 gene after ALC treatment in the rat brain. ALC seems to exert a pivotal role in the mechanisms which, at the level of mitochondrion, transfer the produced energy to the cellular membrane where they modulate the electrogenic pump subserving the
Acknowledgement
The authors thank Sigma-Tau Laboratories, Pomezia, Roma, for providing us with acetyl-l-carnitine and for supporting the work.
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