Han T M, De Vries G J
Center for Neuroendocrine Studies and Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003-7720, USA.
J Neurobiol. 1999 Mar;38(4):491-8.
Male rats possess twice as many cells that express arginine-vasopressin (AVP) in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) and centromedial amygdala (CMA) as do females. This sex difference may arise from sex differences in the induction of AVP expression in galanin (GAL)-expressing cells, which themselves do not differ in number between males and females. To test whether AVP expression could arise from a single pool of galaninergic cells, we determined whether the cell birth profile of GAL-immunoreactive (ir) cells was similar to that of AVP-ir cells. Dams were injected with the cell birth marker bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) on one of seven gestational dates, ranging from embryonic day 11 (E11) to E17. The resulting offspring were sacrificed at 3 months of age. Processing their brains for the presence of either GAL and BrdU, or AVP and BrdU immunoreactivity revealed that in both the BST and CMA, the majority of GAL-ir and AVP-ir cells were labeled with BrdU on E12 and E13. In contrast, most other cells in the same region were labeled on E14 and E15. The similarity in the timing of cell birth of the GAL-ir and AVP-ir cells is consistent with the idea that GAL-ir cells in the BST/CMA constitute a single pool of cells that may be induced to express AVP during development.
雄性大鼠终纹床核（BST）和中央内侧杏仁核（CMA）中表达精氨酸加压素（AVP）的细胞数量是雌性大鼠的两倍。这种性别差异可能源于在表达甘丙肽（GAL）的细胞中诱导AVP表达的性别差异，而这些细胞本身在雄性和雌性之间数量并无差异。为了测试AVP表达是否可能源于单一的甘丙肽能细胞群，我们确定了GAL免疫反应性（ir）细胞的细胞生成谱是否与AVP-ir细胞的相似。在胚胎第11天（E11）至E17这七个妊娠期的某一天，给孕鼠注射细胞生成标记物溴脱氧尿苷（BrdU）。所产后代在3个月大时处死。对它们的大脑进行处理，以检测是否存在GAL和BrdU或AVP和BrdU免疫反应性，结果显示，在BST和CMA中，大多数GAL-ir和AVP-ir细胞在E12和E13时被BrdU标记。相比之下，同一区域的大多数其他细胞在E14和E15时被标记。GAL-ir和AVP-ir细胞的细胞生成时间相似，这与BST/CMA中的GAL-ir细胞构成一个单一细胞群的观点一致，该细胞群在发育过程中可能被诱导表达AVP。
