I am designing an experiment using stereotaxic viral injection in conjunction with chronic stress in mice. So far, I am planning on injecting the virus, allowing the mice a few days to recover, then initiating the 4-week chronic stress protocol. Does anyone have any information on, or has it been tested before, whether chronic stress exposure impairs viral gene expression in any way?
Viral vector expression and its response to chronic stress, if any, is largely going to be controlled by the viral construct itself. Is the type of virus, trans-gene, or its promoter affected by chronic stress? If the vector has a reporter gene then it would be easy to measure level of expression between stressed and non-stressed groups. Hope this helps!
Thanks, that does help! Viral expression is Cre-dependent, which as a transgene is not affected by chronic stress as far as I know. But it does have a GFP tag so I'll be able to compare expression levels to know for sure.
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