Fig. 4.

Shortstop mice demonstrate resistance to excitotoxicity compared with the YAC128 model. (A and B) Intrastriatal injection of the NMDA agonist QA in 6-month-old mice revealed larger fluorojade-stained (apoptotic) lesions in coronal sections of YAC128 mice compared with shortstop mice (B). Lesion volume was quantified and found to be significantly less in shortstop mice compared with YAC128 mice by Student's t test (A). (C) Primary striatal neuronal cultures established from YAC128 and SS postnatal day-0 pups were treated with NMDA. Apoptotic neurons were stained and quantified by using TUNEL and propidium iodide (PI). (D) YAC128 mice revealed a significantly increased percentage of apoptotic neurons compared with shortstop mice (C) by one-way ANOVA with Tukey's posttest. MK-801 reduces the level of apoptotic death in the YAC128 neurons to baseline. Mean ± SD is shown.