Utility of a commercial antibody against NTRK1 for western blotting and potential application to immunohistochemistry in adult mouse brain

Ntrk1 (also known as TrkA) is a nerve growth factor receptor with essential roles in the development and function of the cholinergic nervous system. Ntrk1 is expressed in a few specific and defined brain areas. Specific antibodies are necessary to identify the expression and localization of Ntrk1 in the brain, and validating signal authenticity is critical. These issues have not been investigated sufficiently. We evaluated the utility of commercial antibodies for Ntrk1 using western blotting in brain lysates from Ntrk1 knockout mice and tested the utility of the antibody that showed specificity in western blotting for immunohistochemistry applications in the adult mouse brain. We confirmed specificity for one of the seven commercial antibodies in western blots, in which the specific bands were absent in the knockout samples. Using this antibody, we performed immunohistochemical staining of the brain tissues of adult mice to examine Ntrk1 localization. Distinct signals were observed in regions with known Ntrk1 expression, such as the striatum and basal forebrain. The characteristic expression pattern of Ntrk1 in the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) was verified at the protein level, with high and low expression levels in the anterior and posterior PVT, respectively.