Figure 1.

Probe design and specificity. A shows a relative location of sODN-fosB within the splice site of the fosB mRNA. B shows the location of sODN-ΔfosB flanking the spliced site of ΔfosB mRNA. C shows a combination of sODN-fosB to a common USP ODN in sense sequence allows amplification of 146 bp from fosB cDNA, but not ΔfosB cDNA by PCR. D shows one cDNA fragment was amplified from total cDNA of mouse striatum (C57black6 mice) when the sODN-fosB or sODN-ΔfosB was used (two of four mice tested were shown) (Cui et al., 1999). A combination of sODN-ΔfosB and USP-ODN allows amplification of 123-bp ΔfosB cDNA. Because of partial homology in this 123 bp fragment to FosB cDNA, we did not perform diagnostic sequencing, but the specificity of sODN-ΔfosB was tested by in vivo hybridization and MRI (see Fig. 3D).