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Background: Various CACNA1A missense mutations cause familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 (FHM1), a rare monogenic subtype of migraine with aura. FHM1 mutation R192Q is associated with pure hemiplegic migraine, whereas the S218L mutation causes hemiplegic migraine, cerebellar ataxia, seizures, and mild head trauma-induced brain edema. Transgenic knock-in (KI) migraine mouse models were generated that carried either the FHM1 R192Q or the S218L mutation and were shown to exhibit increased CaV2.1 channel activity. Here we investigated their cerebellar and caudal cortical transcriptome., Methods: Caudal cortical and cerebellar RNA expression profiles from mutant and wild-type mice were studied using microarrays. Respective brain regions were selected based on their relevance to migraine aura and ataxia. Relevant expression changes were further investigated at RNA and protein level by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and/or immunohistochemistry, respectively., Results: Expression differences in the cerebellum were most pronounced in S218L mice. Particularly, tyrosine hydroxylase, a marker of delayed cerebellar maturation, appeared strongly upregulated in S218L cerebella. In contrast, only minimal expression differences were observed in the caudal cortex of either mutant mice strain., Conclusion: Despite pronounced consequences of migraine gene mutations at the neurobiological level, changes in cortical RNA expression in FHM1 migraine mice compared to wild-type are modest. In contrast, pronounced RNA expression changes are seen in the cerebellum of S218L mice and may explain their cerebellar ataxia phenotype.

Background: MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA transcripts that regulate post-transcriptional gene expression. The millions of short sequence reads generated by next generation sequencing technologies make this technique explicitly suitable for profiling of known and novel microRNAs. A modification to the small-RNA expression kit (SREK, Ambion) library preparation method for the SOLiD sequencing platform is described to generate microRNA sequencing libraries that are compatible with the Illumina Genome Analyzer. Results: High quality sequencing libraries can successfully be prepared from as little as 100 ng small RNA enriched RNA. An easy to use perl-based analysis pipeline called E-miR was developed to handle the sequencing data in several automated steps including data format conversion, 3' adapter removal, genome alignment and annotation to non-coding RNA transcripts. The sample preparation and E-miR pipeline were used to identify 37 cardiac enriched microRNAs in stage 16 chicken embryos. Isomir expression profiles between the heart and embryo were highly correlated for all miRNAs suggesting that tissue or cell specific miRNA modifications do not occur. Conclusions: In conclusion, our alternative sample preparation method can successfully be applied to generate high quality miRNA sequencing libraries for the Illumina genome analyzer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]