In Situ Hybridization on Brain Tissue

In situ hybridization (ISH) is an important method for determining the distribution of mRNA within cells or tissue preparations by hybridization of a nucleic acid probe (either DNA or RNA) with a specific target nucleic acid (usually mRNA) (1 ,2 ). Thus, ISH enables the localization of transcripts within cells, tissues, and whole body and allows a neuroanatomic comparison of specific mRNA expression with the respective protein expression. Furthermore, ISH can serve as a tool to detect quantitative changes in gene expression in distinct neuroanatomic areas under various experimental conditions.