Psychedelics Produce Complex And Heterogeneous Transcriptional Responses In Diverse Cortical Cell Types In The Brain Of Rats As Determined By New Flow Cytometric Methods Allowing For Sorting Of Distinct Cell And Neuronal Populations From Whole Brain
The FASEB Journal April 1, 2016 David Martin, Connie Porretta, Charles D. Nichols 1 citation
The classic psychedelic (R)-DOI, a selective 5-HT2 receptor agonist, activates a diverse set of brain cells beyond just neurons. In the medial prefrontal and somatosensory cortex of mice, (R)-DOI induced immediate early genes like cfos in parvalbumin- and somatostatin-expressing interneurons, HTR2A-expressing neurons, and astrocytes. A new flow cytometry method that preserves intact cytoplasm and extracellular membranes allowed isolation of pure populations of somatostatin and parvalbumin interneurons from whole cortex. Further sorting by cFos activation revealed that different immediate early genes, such as egr2, are not uniformly induced across all activated cells. The technique is broadly applicable for studying cell-type-specific transcriptional and translational effects of any manipulation in the brain.