Cryostat sections for biochemical study of small, important brain regions
One of the limitations of brain banking for neurodegenerative disease research is that some of the most important brain regions are very small and just one or two studies may entirely deplete the tisssue. Examples of these small yet vital regions are the entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, amygdala and substantia nigra. To overcome this limitation and distribute tissue from these regions to greater numbers of researchers, we have been sectioning these brain areas on a cryostat and providing researchers with samples of 5–10 cryostat sections per case. This has been found sufficient to allow 5–6 Western blot analyses for proteins of interest and numerous RNA analyses for studies of gene expression. Conservatively, we estimate that this will increase utilization by 10-fold or greater.