Since its first description by Liu et al. and Zhang et al., hydrodynamic gene delivery (HGD) has become an invaluable tool for studying gene function in rodent model systems1,2. The technique involves the rapid injection (5-7 sec) of a large volume (8-12% body weight) of solution into the tail vein of mice to facilitate the uptake of plasmid DNA by the cells of target organs1,2. These conditions lead to robust gene expression in the liver and less gene expression in the kidney, spleen, lung and heart.
Injection of 10 μg pCMV-LacZ plasmid can transfect as much as 40% of hepatocytes, making HGD the most efficient, non-viral, in vivo gene delivery method to date1. Unlike viral carriers, pDNA is easy to prepare, does not elicit an immune response in the rodent host3 and does not pose a health risk by recombining with endogenous viruses. In addition, since the DNA molecules delivered by HGD do not need packaging, this method is suitable for the delivery of bacterial artificial chromosomes (BAC) as large as 150 kb4. Other types of molecules that have been delivered by a hydrodynamic method include RNA5-10, morpholinos11, proteins12,13 and other small molecules12,14. The advantages and disadvantages of HGD over other delivery methods have been discussed in excellent reviews in the literature15-20 and a number of authors have provided a detailed description of the procedure21-23.
Introducing transgenes into mice by HGD is safe and effective1-3,24 and the method has been used in rats with comparable success25. With certain modifications, proof-of-concept experiments have been carried out in chickens26, rabbits27 and pigs28, although, the in vivo application of this technique in larger animals remains a challenge. When using this method, another common limitation is that many of the available mammalian expression vectors lack the components to achieve a persistent, high level of gene expression. Using a pCMV-Luc plasmid, gene expression in the target organs is evident as early as ten minutes after HGD, however, the initial, high expression level drops sharply in the first week after injection1. Long-term transgene expression is possible depending on the promoter and intron used in plasmid design3,24 however, maintenance of high-level gene expression often requires repeated injections. For this reason, HGD might be less suitable to study chronic diseases that are a result of long-term exposure to damaging proteins or protein products. With these limitations, HGD is an exceptionally powerful tool for studying the potential role of a gene and the effect of it mutants in vivo, as well as the therapeutic effects and regulation of proteins and for establishing animal models of disease (for review, see15). For example, HGD may be used to assign function to domains and amino acids of proteins by individually introducing various gene constructs into mice that have the respective genes knocked out. Furthermore, this technique may be used in any mouse strain.
This protocol describes HGD in mice with a focus on the technical aspects necessary to achieve successful transfection: correct needle insertion into the vein, injection volume and speed of delivery. The application of this method is demonstrated in a mouse model of African trypanosomiasis, a fatal disease of humans and livestock29,30. While several species of trypanosomes cause disease in livestock, most cannot cause disease in humans due to innate immune complexes in blood called trypanosome lytic factors (TLFs)29,31,32. These pore-forming, high-density lipoproteins (HDL) contain two unique, primate-specific proteins: HPR, the ligand, which facilitates the uptake of TLFs into trypanosomes, and APOL-I, the lytic component31,33-38. Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense is able to infect humans due to expression of a serum resistance-associated protein (SRA) that binds to and neutralizes human APOL-I34,39. Baboon TLF is not neutralized by SRA due to its divergent APOL-I protein40. As reported previously, using a mammalian expression vector (pRG977), transgenic expression of baboon TLF components in mice confers protection against human-infective trypanosomes40. The representative data presented here demonstrate how hydrodynamic gene delivery may be applied to study the therapeutic effects of a protein.