Gene transfer into hypothalamic organotypic cultures using an adeno-associated virus vector

Organotypic cultures of rat hypothalamic slice cultures were successfully t ransduced using adenoassociated viral vectors. Using nuclear-targeted Lac-Z as the reporter gene, transduction was found to be very effective, occurri ng in as high as 89% of a specific cell type, the oxytocin neurons, present in the cultured explants. These transduction levels were not accompanied b y any deleterious effects in the cultured cells 7 days after transduction. Such an in vitro approach should be valuable for the study of cell-specific gene expression in neurons in the central nervous system for which there a re no homologous (surrogate) cell lines, (C) 1999 Academic Press.