Figure 3.

Transgenic mice express the COXIV zipcode in the frontal and pre-frontal cortex. (A) Schematic diagram showing the chimeric transgenic expression construct used to generate the transgenic animals. The construct contains the mCherry open-reading-frame followed by the 38bp COXIV zipcode. The expression of this cassette is driven by the α-calmodulin kinase II promoter. The mCherry+3′UTR [38bp] transgene expression in coronal brain sections show mCherry signal in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) (B) and the frontal cortex (FC) (C) as detected by fluorescence microscopy using a dsRED antibody that was visualized by Alexa488 (Green). SL-superficial layer; DL- deep layer in the section. The sections were counterstained with 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (blue).(D) Prefrontal cortex (PFC), frontal cortex (FC), hippocampus (Hip) and cerebellum (Cb) was dissected from transgenic animals and non-transgenic littermates, and total RNA was extracted (see Methods). Following reverse transcription, transgene specific primers were used to detect the presence of exogenous mCherry+3′UTR [38bp] transcripts. GAPDH and β-actin were used as internal positive controls.