Laser Capture Microdissection in Traumatic Brain Injury Research: Obtaining Hippocampal Subregions and Pools of Injured Neurons for Genomic Analyses.

The methods presented here are based on our laboratory's 15 years of experience using laser capture microdissection to obtain samples for the study of gene expression after traumatic brain injury (TBI) using a well-established rat model of experimental TBI. Here, we describe how to use the ArcturusXT laser capture microdissection system to capture swaths of specific regions of the rat hippocampus as well as specific neuronal populations defined by Fluoro-Jade C staining. Staining with Fluoro-Jade C identifies a neuron that is in the process of degeneration. We have optimized our protocols for Fluoro-Jade C tissue staining and laser capture microdissection to maintain RNA integrity which is essential for a variety of downstream applications, such as microarray, PCR array, and quantitative real-time PCR analyses.