Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Houston, Texas » Children's Nutrition Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #330678
Title: Visualizing estrogen receptor-a-expressing neurons using a new ERa-ZsGreen reporter mouse line

Author
item SAITO, KENJI - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item HE, YANLIN - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item YAN, XIAOFENG - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item YANG, YONGJIE - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item WANG, CHUNMEI - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item XU, PINGWEN - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item HINTON, ANTENTOR - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item SHU, GANG - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item YU, LIKAI - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item TONG, QINGCHUN - University Of Houston
item XU, YONG - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)

Submitted to: Metabolism
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/19/2015
Publication Date: 4/18/2016
Citation: Saito, K., He, Y., Yan, X., Yang, Y., Wang, C., Xu, P., Hinton, A.O., Shu, G., Yu, L., Tong, Q., Xu, Y. 2016. Visualizing estrogen receptor-a-expressing neurons using a new ERa-ZsGreen reporter mouse line. Metabolism. 65(4):522-532.

Interpretive Summary: Estrogen, the female sex hormone, has broad biological functions, but how it works remains to be fully elucidated. Here we generated a new mouse line in which estrogen responsive cells can be easily visualized with a green marker. This new tool may be used by the scientific community to study estrogen actions in depth.

Technical Abstract: A variety of biological functions of estrogens, including regulation of energy metabolism, are mediated by neurons expressingestrogen receptor-a (ERa) in the brain. However, complex intracellular processes in these ERa-expressing neurons are difficult to unravel, due to the lack of strategy to visualize ERa-expressing neurons, especially in unfixed brain tissues. Here we generated a novel ERa-ZsGreen reporter mouse line in which expression of a green fluorescent reporter protein, ZsGreen, is driven by a 241kb ERa gene promoter. We validated that ZsGreen is highly colocalized with endogenous ERa in the brain. Native ZsGreen signals were visualized in unfixed brain tissue, and were used to assist single cell collection and electrophysiological recordings. Finally, we demonstrated that this ERa-ZsGreen mouse allele can be used in combination with other genetic reporter alleles to allow experiments in highly selective neural populations.