Intra-subject correlation of brain and blood gene expression in a mouse model of depression

ABSTRACT: Gene expression profiling of blood cells in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) has been used to identify potential biomarkers and to address the pathophysiology of MDD. However, whether alteration in gene expression in blood cells are reflected in the brain of the same individual is unclear. Here, we used an animal model of depression to investigate intra-subject correlation of gene expression patterns between the whole blood (WB) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Ovariectomized mice exposed to the chronic ultra-mild stress were used as an animal model of depression. The major findings of the current genome-wide microarray analysis are that 1) the expression levels of 467 genes that were expressed in both tissues correlated positively between the two tissues, 2) alterations in the expression of 4,215 genes in the WB of OVX-operated mice compared to the sham-operated mice were concordant with alterations in the corresponding mPFC, 3) the biological terms over-represented in the 4,215 OVX-affected genes were associated with ribosomal function, and 4) the 6 genes that are potentially relevant to depression-like behavior were observed to be differentially expressed in the WB of the model mice. The current findings suggest that alterations in the expression of a subset of genes are significantly correlated between the WB and the mPFC with in the same individual in an experimental model of depression. Female mice were subjected to chronic ultra-mild stress, a bilateral ovariectomy, or both. Sham-operated mice without stress were used as the control. Medial prefrontal cortex and whole blood were obtained from the same individual (n = 6 in each group), and analyzed using an Agilent SurePrint G3 Mouse GE 8×60K Microarray (Design ID: 028005)

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

SUBMITTER: Shigeo Miyata 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-72262 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress