Note the presence of several ARE either in the proximal 5′ … Discussion In this study, we performed microarray analyses to determine the effects of acute ethanol exposure on gene expression in primary cultures of mouse cortical astrocytes. We found that ethanol induced 1080 genes and downregulated 1067 genes (Fig. 1 and Table S1). To our knowledge, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical this is the first study to investigate the genomic adaptative response triggered by alcohol in a relatively pure astrocyte preparation. Previous work performed using tissue from the frontal cortex of human alcoholics has identified a number of glial genes that were differentially regulated

(Lewohl et al. 2000; Mayfield et al. 2002; Flatscher-Bader et al. 2005), with 79 astrocyte-specific Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical genes upregulated in the cortex of cirrhotic alcoholics

(Liu et al. 2007). These original findings provided the driving force for our present study and when they are considered together with our results WEEL screening indicate that astrocytes are active participants in the genomic response of the brain to ethanol. Our microarray screen shows that a brief exposure of cortical astrocytes to ethanol increased Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the expression of a large number of genes. These ARGs fall into the class of glial-specific immune response genes, as well as genes involved in the regulation of transcription, cell proliferation and differentiation, and genes of the cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix. Genes involved in metabolism were Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical also upregulated by alcohol exposure, including genes associated with oxidoreductase activity, insulin-like growth factor signaling, acetyl-CoA and lipid metabolism. In contrast, a similar analysis in ethanol-treated primary cortical neurons revealed genes involved in synaptic transmission, calcium sensor proteins involved in vesicle docking to the plasma Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical membrane, synapse formation and plasticity, microtubule assembly

and trafficking protein genes (Pignataro et al. 2007). Therefore, the different classes of genes induced by ethanol in astrocytes and neurons appear to be related to the physiological function of each cell type. HSF1 is involved in ethanol regulation of astrocyte gene expression Previously, we identified a set of neuronal ARGs induced by the activation of HSF1 and its subsequent binding to the ARE (Pignataro et al. for 2007). To determine whether a set of astrocytic ARGs is regulated in a similar manner, we first investigated the ability of ethanol to activate HSF1 in these cells. Our data show that acute exposure of astrocytes to ethanol promotes the translocation of HSF1 into the nucleus, a prerequisite for the activation of this transcription factor. As it is known that activated HSF1 induces the expression of Hsp genes (Morimoto et al. 1998), we tested whether acute ethanol could stimulate the expression of these genes in astrocytes, and found that ethanol increases HSPs mRNA and protein levels.