All treated rats underwent forelimb behavior testing at 1 month or at both 1 and 2 months after vector injection. For molecular analyses, rats were anesthetized with sodium pentobarbital (75 mg/kg) and perfused through the ascending aorta with 0.9% saline. CHIR-99021 purchase The left and right ventral mesencephalons, as well as the left and right striata were

collected and stored at −80 °C until homogenization. To extract nucleic acids and the soluble protein fractions, tissues were homogenized in homogenization buffer (1× PBS, 1% Triton-Tx, 5 mM EDTA) containing 10 μl/ml of HALT protease and phosphatase inhibitor (Thermo Scientific) using a glass homogenizer. After 4 freeze-thaw cycles in an ethanol bath at −80 °C for 2 min and a 37 °C water bath for 2 min, homogenates were centrifuged at 100,000×g for 1hr at 4 °C. The supernatant was collected and the pellet (ribosomal mRNA, DNA, insoluble protein) was suspended in TRI Reagent™ (Ambion, Austin, TX). The TRI protocol Ivacaftor manufacturer was used to extract RNA and DNA. For histology, sodium pentobarbital-anesthetized

rats were perfused through the ascending aorta with 0.9% saline containing 0.002% sodium nitrite, followed by 4% phosphate buffered paraformaldehyde (pH=7.4). Brains were post-fixed overnight in 5% sucrose–4% paraformaldehyde and then cryoprotected in an increasing gradient of sucrose concentrations (10–30%) in 0.1 M PBS. A sliding microtome (Leica SM2000 R) was used to cut sections in the coronal plane at 40 μm. Six serial sets of sections were collected and stored in cryoprotectant solution at −20 °C. TRI-extracted RNA was treated with a DNase before quantitation. RNA and DNA levels were measured using quantitative

TaqMan™ or SYBR Green real-time PCR on an Applied Biosystems Ureohydrolase (Foster City, CA) 7500 fast real-time PCR system. TaqMan RNA reactions contained 25 ng of RNA, 12.5 μl of 2× TaqMan Universal PCR buffer, 6.25 U of MuLV reverse transcriptase, 1.25 U of RNase inhibitor, 0.25 μl of each primer (10 μM forward β-actin, TH, or 20 μM forward hSNCA and 20 μM reverse β-actin, hSNCA or 10 μM reverse TH), and 0.5 μl of probe (5 μM) in a 25 μl volume. TaqMan DNA reactions contained the same components as the RNA reactions, except water replaced the reverse transcriptase and RNase inhibitor. For DNA, only hSNCA plasmid content was measured using TaqMan real-time PCR. SYBR Green real-time PCR was used to measure turbo GFP plasmid (i.e. silencing vector) content. SYBR Green reactions contained 25 ng of DNA, 12.5 μl of 2× Power SYBR Green Master Mix, 0.25 μl of AmpErase and 2.25 μl of each primer (10 μM) in a 25 μl volume. Target-specific primers and probes were designed using Primer Express 3.0 (Applied Biosystems) and BLAST (blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).