Temporal and Spatial Gene Expression Profile of Stroke Recovery Genes in Mice.

Stroke patients show some degree of spontaneous functional recovery, but this is not sufficient to prevent long-term disability. One promising approach is to characterize the dynamics of stroke recovery genes in the lesion and distant areas. We induced sensorimotor cortex lesions in adult C57BL/6J mice using photothrombosis and performed qPCR on selected brain areas at 14, 28, and 56 days post-stroke (P14-56). Based on the grid walk and rotating beam test, the mice were classified into two groups. The expression of cAMP pathway genes , , and , was higher in poor- compared to well-recovered mice in contralesional primary motor cortex (cl-MOp) at P14&56 and cl-thalamus (cl-TH), but lower in cl-striatum (cl-Str) at P14 and cl-primary somatosensory cortex (cl-SSp) at P28. Plasticity and axonal sprouting genes, and , were decreased in cl-MOp at P14 and cl-Str at P28 and increased in cl-SSp at P28 and cl-Str at P14, respectively. In the cl-TH, was increased, and decreased at P14. , also involved in axonal sprouting, was only increased in poor-recovered mice in cl-MOp at P28. The results underline the gene expression dynamics and spatial variability and challenge existing theories of restricted neural plasticity.