Genetic and molecular determinants of temporal lobe epilepsy - a translational investigation

Acquired epilepsy is the most common form of drug resistant acquired epilepsy in adults, where seizures continue to occur despite antiepileptic drug treatment. Importantly, acquired epilepsy is believed to usually be acquired resulting from some sort of brain insult. However, not all the patients that suffer a brain insult develop epilepsy. The genetic determinants that lead to development of acquired epilepsy in these patients has not been fully understood. The FAST (kindling seizure-prone) and SLOW (kindling seizure-resistant) rat strains are a result of selective breeding of genetic predisposition to develop focal seizures in the kindling model. Interestingly, these strains have not been evaluated as models of acquired epilepsy. Given that the FAST and SLOW were selectively bred from the same parental strains, any genetic difference between the two groups has a strong a priori case for being important in contributing to the propensity to develop an acquired epilepsy phenotype. Skills: The skills expected to be learnt from this project include: Small animal handling and neurosurgery (electrode implantations), EEG recordings and analysis, and biochemical and molecular analysis (mRNA and protein expression).Bioinfomatics (proteomics, transcriptomics and genomics)