Quantification of Cerebral Gene Activities In Vivo by Gene-Targeting MRI

Christina Liu¹, Jinsheng Yang¹, Jia Q Ren¹, Charng-Ming Liu¹, Philip Liu¹

In this work, we applied in vivo gene transcript targeting MRI technique and ex vivo Taqman probe-based gene analysis to quantify cerebral gene transcription. We found a positive correlation between in vivo MR signal change and cerebral gene activity as measured by messenger RNA (mRNA) copy number in the striatum of mouse brains. Such correlation advances this approach as a non-invasive method to quantitatively detect changes in gene transcription as well as mRNA-based cell typing in living brains.