A first example comes from a recent study that capitalized on a single episode of binge drinking to identify transcriptional changes correlated with blood alcohol levels [44]. C57Bl/6J mice were offered access to a bottle of water or 20% v/v ethanol for 4 h during the dark cycle, and blood and brain samples were obtained immediately at the end of the voluntary drinking session. Interestingly, the biological processes that were most populated with genes correlated with blood alcohol levels were brain region-specific: signal transduction in the cerebellum, ion transport in the hippocampus and ventral midbrain, gene expression in the olfactory bulb, metabolism in the frontal cortex, and transport/establishment of localization in the striatum. In the striatum, an ethanol-responsive module was enriched in genes known to be expressed in medium spiny neurons, indicating that this neuronal population is a sensitive target for acute ethanol-induced plasticity.
