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. 2012 Aug 1;124(3):223-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2012.01.013. Epub 2012 Feb 20.

Opioid receptor expression in human brain and peripheral tissues using absolute quantitative real-time RT-PCR

Jinsong Peng  1 , Sraboni Sarkar, Sulie L Chang
Affiliations

Opioid receptor expression in human brain and peripheral tissues using absolute quantitative real-time RT-PCR

Jinsong Peng et al. Drug Alcohol Depend. .

Abstract

Background: The actions of endogenous opioid peptides are mediated by 3 main classes of opioid receptors; mu (MOR), kappa (KOR), and delta (DOR).

Methods: We developed an absolute quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase PCR (AQ-rt-RT-PCR) assay to quantify MOR, DOR, and KOR mRNA in 22 human tissues.

Results: MOR mRNA was greatly enriched (12-20×10(6)copies/μg) in the cerebellum, nucleus accumbens, and caudate nucleus; moderate (6×10(6)copies/μg) in the dorsal root ganglion, spinal cord, and adrenal gland; low (2×10(4)copies/μg) in the pancreas and small intestine; and absent in the lung, spleen, kidney, heart, skeletal muscle, liver, and thymus. High levels (>8.8×10(6)copies/μg) of DOR mRNA were expressed in the brain and dorsal root ganglion; moderate (1.5×10(6)copies/μg) in the adrenal gland and pancreas; low (2×10(4)-6.5×10(5)copies/μg in the cerebellum, spinal cord, small intestine, skeletal muscle, thymus, lung, and kidney); and very low (3.8×10(3)copies/μg) in the heart. DOR mRNA was not detected in the spleen or liver. KOR mRNA was moderate (1×10(6)copies/μg) in brain regions and dorsal root ganglion, but low (1.6-7×10(5)copies/μg) in the cerebellum, temporal lobe and all other peripheral tissues.

Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that the AQ-rt-RT-PCR is a highly reproducible and precise method to study the expression of opioid receptors in various tissues and under different disease conditions.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest

No conflict declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Standard curves for MOR, DOR, KOR, and GAPDH
Ten-fold serial dilutions of the RNA standard were amplified by real-time PCR. Threshold cycle values are plotted against input RNA copy number, or the amount of total RNA. The correlation coefficient (R2) of MOR, DOR, KOR, and GAPDH were 0.9955, 0.9993, 0.9988, and 0.9986, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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