Figure 2.

(Opposite.) Rapid, post-transcriptional regulation in hippocampal neurons mirrors activity-regulated genes in DRG axons. Hierarchical clustering of microarray expression data shows the regulation of hundreds of genes following neural activity in cultured hippocampal neurons and DRG neurons. These results were compared against gene expression changes in DRG neurons following 2 h of patterned electrical stimulation by z-fold normalized expression changes in post-transcriptional gene expression at 5, 30 and 60 min in hippocampal neurons (±actinomycin D) following a short synaptic stimulus (5 min BiC/4-AP). DRG neurons were electrically stimulated in multi-compartment chambers (electronic supplementary material, figure S1) in order to measure changes in gene expression in axons (DRG axons) and cell bodies (DRG cell bodies) separately. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of microarray data from MGC nylon membranes is shown. In b (upregulated) and c (downregulated) are example clusters from a, further demonstrating co-regulation of transcripts in DRG axons and hippocampal neurons by a post-transcriptional mechanism.