Objectives of the PPGI plateform
A high proportion of neurological disorders, specifically those resulting from genetic abnormalities, originates in utero and in early post-natal periods when the brain develops and mature, but can remain asymptomatic for long periods of time. In most cases, clinical manifestations start to appear years later, when the brain has acquired a sufficient degree of maturation. The main goal of our facility is to create animal models of human neurological pathologies and to offer to the scientific community, a combination of technical skills and scientific equipements to allow anatomical and fonctional studies of these animal models.
Our strategy is based on the transfection or infection of neuron progenitors at specific embryonic stages by in utero injection and/or elctroporation of appropiate vectors in order to inactivate the expression of specific genes (by RNAi ) or to express mutated forms of specific proteins.
The facility proposes:
1) Conception and in vitro validation (in neuronal or non neuronal cell lines or primary neuron cell cultures) of your constructs.
2) Injection and in utero electroporation of rat or mouse embryos
3) Embryo dissections and brain fixations
4) Vibratome sectionning of brains
5) Councelling and supervising for morphological and electrophysiological analyses.
Post-genomic facility
It comprises a type 2 animal facility (A2) and a type 2 laboratory L2 (to handle viruses), already equipped with two in utero injection posts, a cell culture room, a histology room, a biphotonic microscope.
This facility is opened to scientific teams from other institutes. All the projects developped by the facility are evaluated by the scientific committee. Scientific experts from other institutes will soon be contacted to participate to the scientific committee.
Ongoing projects
Equipes INMED-INSERM U901
– A. Represa
– P. Szepetowski
– J.L. Gaiarsa
– I. Medyna
– F. Muscatelli
Equipes externes:
– L.Villard INSERM U910
Financial supports
This facility was created and equiped with the financial support of the INSERM Institute , the Provence-Alpes Cote d’Azur region, Bettencourt Foundation, the ” Fondation pour la Recherche sur le Cerveau”, the Aix-Marseille 2 University , the city of Marseille.