Brain tissue was homogenized in Qiagen
® lysis solution and total RNA was isolated by phenol-chloroform extraction using a RNeasy
® lipid tissue mini kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA). Complementary DNA was prepared from total RNA using a high-capacity cDNA Archive kit (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA). mRNA levels (IL-1β, TNFα, GFAP, CD11b, cPLA
2-IVA, sPLA
2-IIA, iPLA
2-VIA, COX-1, COX-2, mPGES, cPGES, 5-, 12-, 15-LOX, TXS, cytochrome p450 epoxygenase, drebrin and neurofilament-L) were measured by quantitative RT-PCR, using an ABI PRISM 7000 sequence detection system (Applied Biosystems). Specific primers and probes for cPLA
2-IVA
B, sPLA
2-IIA
B, iPLA
2-VIA, COX-1, COX-2, mPGES, cPGES, 5-, 12-, 15-LOX, TXS, cytochrome p450 epoxygenase, drebrin and neurofilament-L were purchased from TaqMan
R gene expression assays (Applied Biosystems), and consisted of a 20× mix of unlabeled PCR primers and Taqman minor groove binder (MGB) probe (FAM dye-labeled). The fold-change in gene expression was determined by the ΔΔC
T method [
39]. Data are expressed as the relative level of the target gene (IL-1β, TNFα, GFAP, CD11b, cPLA
2-IVA
B, sPLA
2-IIA, iPLA
2-VIA, COX-1, COX-2, mPGES, cPGES, 5-, 12-, and 15-LOX, TXS, cytochrome p450 epoxygenase, drebrin or neurofilament-L) in the brain of the HIV-1 Tg rat normalized to the endogenous control (β-globulin) and relative to the control (calibrator). All experiments were carried out in triplicate from each control and HIV-1 Tg rat brain (n = 6).