Transcriptional profiling of mouse prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens under chronic jet lag
Chronic jet lag (CJL) induced by shifting light-dark cycles repeatedly is a commonly used protocol to mimic the environmental light/dark changes encountered by shift workers. We conducted RNA sequencing using prefrontal cortex (PFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) tissues from these animals, which are brains regions strongly implicated in the pathology of various neurological and psychiatric conditions. Our results reveal the alterations of brain activities and systematic reprogramming of gene expression in brain tissues under CJL, building hypothesis for how CJL increases the susceptibility to neurological and psychiatric diseases. Overall design: 8-week-old male C57BL/6J mice purchased from Model Animal Research Center of Nanjing University were assigned to different cages randomly with approximately 5 animals per cage. Animals were housed in light-tight cabinets with time-controlled illumination. Food and sterilized water were accessible ad libitum. The mice were housed under 12 hour light: 12 hour dark (12L12D) for 2 weeks for entrainment prior to CJL treatment. For CJL group, lights on and off times were advanced by 6 hours every 2 days whereas for control group they remain unchanged. On CJL Day 10, PFC and NAc were harvested from 3 control and 3 CJL treated animals at Zeitgeber Time 1 (ZT1, 1 hour after lights on; ZT0 is defined as the time of lights on) and ZT13, respectively.