QRFP-Deficient Mice Are Hypophagic, Lean, Hypoactive and Exhibit Increased Anxiety-Like Behavior
Fig 1
Strategy and characterization of mouse QRFP gene disruption.
A, Strategy for QRFP disruption. B, BamHI; E, EcoRI; H, HindIII; K, KpnI; S, SalI; X, XbaI; Xh, XhoI. GFP, green fluorescent protein; mPrm1, a part of second exon of the murine protamine-1 gene, which contains an intron and a polyadenylation site B, Immunohistochemistry (left panels) and in situ hybridization (right panels) of coronal sections of brains from wild type (upper panels) and QRFP-/- mice (lower panels), showing complete depletion of QRFP expression in QRFP-/- mice. Insets in left panels show high power views of corresponding yellow rectangular region in each panel. C, Distribution of QRFP neurons revealed by immunostaining with anti-GFP antibody in hypothalamic slice of Qrfp-/+ (GFP knock-in) mouse. C1, Coronal brain section of Qrfp-/+- mouse, stained with anti-GFP antiserum. C2, Higher power view of rectangular region shown in C1. C3, Higher power view of rectangular region shown in C2. D, Immunostaining of hypothalamic slice of Qrfp-/+ brain with anti-GFP and anti-QRFP antibodies revealed that more than 95% of QRFP neurons were labeled with anti-GFP antibody, without any evidence of ectopic expression. D1, QRFP-like immunoreactivity. D2, Immunofluorescent image of GFP. D3, Merged image of D1 and D2.