Differential expression of secretagogin immunostaining in the hippocampal formation and the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices of humans, rats, and mice

Secretagogin (SCGN) is a recently discovered calcium-binding protein belonging to the group of EF-hand calcium-binding proteins. SCGN immunostaining has been described in various regions of the human, rat and mouse brain. In these studies, it has been reported that, in general, the patterns of SCGN staining differ between rodents and human brains. These differences have been interpreted as uncovering phylogenetic differences in SCGN expression. Nevertheless, an important aspect that is not usually taken into account is that different methods are used for obtaining and processing brain tissue coming from humans and experimental animals. This is a critical issue since it has been shown that post-mortem time delay and the method of fixation (i.e., perfused vs. nonperfused brains) may influence the results of the immunostaining. Thus, it is not clear whether differences found in comparative studies with the human brain are simply due to technical factors or species-specific differences. In the present study, we analyzed the pattern of SCGN immunostaining in the adult human hippocampal formation (DG, CA1, CA2, CA3, subiculum, presubiculum, and parasubiculum) as well as in the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices. This pattern of immunostaining was compared with rat and mouse that were fixed either by perfusion or immersion and with different post-mortem time delays (up to 5 hr) to mimic the way the human brain tissue is usually processed. We found a number of clear similarities and differences in the pattern of labeling among the human, rat, and mouse in these brain regions as well as between the different brain regions examined within each species. These differences were not due to the fixation.