Lentiviral Transduction of Neurons in Adult Brain: Evaluation of Inflammatory Response and Cognitive Effects in Mice

Abstract

We evaluated the effect of hippocampal injection of lentiviral particles p156-CMV-EGFP on behavior, learning, and microglial Iba1⁺ cells activation in mice. Testing in the open field and elevated plus-maze revealed higher anxiety levels in lentiviral-injected mice in comparison with animals injected with vehicle. At the same time, lentivirus injection did not change learning and memory of mice in the hippocampal-dependent fear conditioning task. Microglia density in lentivirus-injected mice was significantly higher than in vehicle-injected mice. Thus, hippocampal injection of lentiviral particles with minimum content of transgenes produced evident inflammation process, changed anxiety level of experimental animals, but had no effect on hippocampal-dependent learning and memory.