Harvesting the maximum length of sciatic nerve from adult mice: a step-by-step approach

BMC Research Notes

Pike-See Cheah³  King-Hwa Ling²  Kai-Leng Tan³  Usman Bala¹ 

[1] Department of Human Anatomy, College of Medical Sciences, Gombe State University, P.M.B 127, Gombe, Nigeria;Clinical Genetics Unit, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia;NeuroBiology and Genetics Group, Genetics and Regenerative Medicine Research Centre (GRMRC), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

关键词: Biomedical research;    Maximum length;    Dissection;    Sciatic nerve;    Peripheral nerves;   

Others  :  1127291
DOI  :  10.1186/1756-0500-7-714

 received in 2014-04-03, accepted in 2014-10-02,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Over the past several decades, many studies concerning peripheral nerve damage or regeneration have been performed. Mice have been widely used for many of these studies, with the sciatic nerve being the most targeted and preferred nerve. Therefore, techniques for harvesting mouse sciatic nerves of a maximum length that is sufficient for different analyses will be highly valuable. Here we describe a simple step-by-step guide for harvesting the maximum length of mouse sciatic nerve and compare the length of the harvested nerves gathered with the proposed method with nerves obtained using a conventional mid-thigh incision approach.

Findings

The sciatic nerve was exposed while holding both hind limbs together in one hand and the tail was gently pulled away in the opposite direction. The nerve was traced by dissecting through its course both distally and proximally and was carefully harvested. The total average length of the sciatic nerves obtained using the proposed harvesting method and the mid-thigh incision method was 22.60 ± 1.62 mm and 7.0 ± 0.76 mm, respectively. This length of harvested nerve allows further dissection into several segments that can be used for additional independent analyses such as histochemical/histological analysis and RNA or protein extraction.

Conclusion

The approach described here has several advantages over mid-thigh incision methods in that it: i) allows harvesting of maximum lengths of the sciatic nerve ii) allows simultaneous harvesting of both sciatic nerves, iii) provides time savings; iv) requires no extensive knowledge of veterinary anatomy; and v) provides hassle-free dissection.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Bala et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

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