Brain injury is associated with morphological immunological, and biochemical modifications, some of which may be involved with a healing process. Neurotrophic factors have been shown to appear in the rat brain after lesion. This project intends the molecular cloning of one of the genes encoding for these lesion-induced neurotrophic factors. A cDNA library has been constructed from a mRNA fraction from lesioned rat brain, which was shown to be capable of inducing neurotrophic activity when injected into Xenopus oocytes. Screening of the library by differential colony hybridization and by the test of the neurotrophic activity of the fusion protein the clones has lead to the isolation of several clones. DNA sequencing and analysis of the fusion-protein of these clones is in progress.
