Figure 2

HDACs 2 and 3 are prominently expressed in the mouse retina and increase in expression following optic nerve injury. (A) The presence of transcript and protein of several HDAC isoforms was characterized for the murine retina. HDACs 1-5 were examined as they have all been shown to deacetylate nuclear histones. Left panel, non-quantitative RT-PCR of control retina cDNA generated cDNA amplimers corresponding to Hdacs 1-3 and 5, but not Hdac4. The identity of each amplimer was verified by sequencing. Right panel, HDAC proteins were identified in control retina lysates by western blot analysis using antibodies against the indicated HDAC isoforms. Bands of the reported nuclear weights corresponding to HDACs 1-3 and 5 were detected. Consistent with the RT-PCR experiments, no band was detected for HDAC4. (B) Changes in HDAC transcript abundance after ONC were analyzed by qPCR (n = 8-10 retinas per time point). Transcript levels were expressed as the ratio of crush (OS): control (OD) retinas, and this ratio was normalized to day 0 samples. There were modest, but significant increases in Hdac s 2 and 3 at 1day post crush (*P = 0.0098 and P = 0.0089, respectively) and this increase persisted to 3 days post crush for Hdac3 (*P = 0.0024).