NTU Undergraduates' research April 2014 - Biosciences | Page 98

Localisation of the mRNA of the chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan neurocan in the mouse brain
Richwell T. Chawasarira, N0404609.
ABSTRACT
Neurocan, a chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan which has been previously shown to be specific to
brain and nervous tissue, has had a variety of proposed functions in the central nervous system (CNS)
which include modulation of cellular adhesion molecules, axonal guidance during nervous
development, axon regeneration following nervous tissue injury and implicated roles in some
neuropsychiatric disorders. Due to this variety of proposed roles, identification of the proteoglycan’s
expression in the brain may be regarded to be of significant importance hence the focus of this
report was to detect and describe the presence of neurocan mRNA transcripts in the mouse brain. In
this present report, in situ hybridisation was performed in order to describe the localisation of the
mRNA transcripts which encode for the proteoglycan within the mouse brain. It is reported in this
paper that the transcript of interest is significantly detected in a number of regions of the brain
which include the hippocampal fields, the cerebral 6