DREADD users blog

Pretty amazing paper now on-line from the Josselyn/Frankland labs showing that "...Ablating or silencing neurons overexpressing CREB (due to cocaine) before testing disrupted the expression of a previously acquired cocaine memory, suggesting ... a critical hub in what is likely a larger cocaine memory engram."

A comprehensive review with many useful tables of DREADD applications is now on-line .

I get many requests for these. The Rothlab may have such beasts in hand and will make them available via JAX as soon as they are validated. Rather than sending emails to that lab directly, as soon as the mice are deposited in JAX it will be announced here.

An elegant paper in Cell today demonstrating (again) that local infusions of CNO can modulate terminal release in rats.  Again, TH-Cre rats were used and both excitatory and inhibitory DREADDs were used to modulate norepinephrine release and thereby modify choice decisions.

I see that this facility in France may provide CAV-Cre http://www.biocampus.cnrs.fr/index.php/en/plateformes?id=78

Q: " I have some Gi-DREADDs that I got from UNC and am preparing to inject an aliquot of them into the cortex. Can you tell me if the sample I got from UNC should be diluted or should it be used as is?  If diluted, what do you recommend and how much?" A1: " We look at the titer and generally inject 10^9/uL--so it may need to be diluted to 10^9/ul" Explanation: we try to inject virus with a titer generally ~ 10^9/ul A2:  " It depends on what kind of experiments you are going to do. Some experiments you need to dilute the virus just like Bryan said. Some are not. You can aliquot the virus into 5ul/tube after thawing the virus on ice, and store it in -80. Try your injection with different dilutions of virus. Check the expression and then decide what dilution is good for you. "