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Cross-species molecular dissection across alcohol behavioral domains.

ABSTRACT: This review summarizes the proceedings of a symposium presented at the "Alcoholism and Stress: A Framework for Future Treatment Strategies" conference held in Volterra, Italy on May 9-12, 2017. Psychiatric diseases, including alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), are influenced through complex interactions of genes, neurobiological pathways, and environmental influences. A better understanding of the common neurobiological mechanisms underlying an AUD necessitates an integrative approach, involving a systematic assessment of diverse species and phenotype measures. As part of the World Congress on Stress and Alcoholism, this symposium provided a detailed account of current strategies to identify mechanisms underlying the development and progression of AUDs. Dr. Sean Farris discussed the integration and organization of transcriptome and postmortem human brain data to identify brain regional- and cell type-specific differences related to excessive alcohol consumption that are conserved across species. Dr. Brien Riley presented the results of a genome-wide association study of DSM-IV alcohol dependence; although replication of genetic associations with alcohol phenotypes in humans remains challenging, model organism studies show that COL6A3, KLF12, and RYR3 affect behavioral responses to ethanol, and provide substantial evidence for their role in human alcohol-related traits. Dr. Rob Williams expanded upon the systematic characterization of extensive genetic-genomic resources for quantifying and clarifying phenotypes across species that are relevant to precision medicine in human disease. The symposium concluded with Dr. Robert Hitzemann's description of transcriptome studies in a mouse model selectively bred for high alcohol ("binge-like") consumption and a non-human primate model of long-term alcohol consumption. Together, the different components of this session provided an overview of systems-based approaches that are pioneering the experimental prioritization and validation of novel genes and gene networks linked with a range of behavioral phenotypes associated with stress and AUDs.

SUBMITTER: Farris SP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6309876 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Cross-species molecular dissection across alcohol behavioral domains.

Farris Sean P SP Riley Brien P BP Williams Robert W RW Mulligan Megan K MK Miles Michael F MF Lopez Marcelo F MF Hitzemann Robert R Iancu Ovidiu D OD Colville Alexander A Walter Nicole A R NAR Darakjian Priscila P Oberbeck Denesa L DL Daunais James B JB Zheng Christina L CL Searles Robert P RP McWeeney Shannon K SK Grant Kathleen A KA Mayfield R Dayne RD

Alcohol (Fayetteville, N.Y.) 20171206

This review summarizes the proceedings of a symposium presented at the "Alcoholism and Stress: A Framework for Future Treatment Strategies" conference held in Volterra, Italy on May 9-12, 2017. Psychiatric diseases, including alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), are influenced through complex interactions of genes, neurobiological pathways, and environmental influences. A better understanding of the common neurobiological mechanisms underlying an AUD necessitates an integrative approach, involving a sy ...[more]

PMID: 30213503

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Project description:Vertebrate genomes share numerous conserved non-coding elements, many of which function as enhancer elements and are hypothesised to be under evolutionary constraint due to a need to be bound by combinations of sequence-specific transcription factors. In contrast, few such conserved elements can be detected between vertebrates and their closest invertebrate relatives. Despite this lack of sequence identity, cross-species transgenesis has identified some cases where non-coding DNA from invertebrates drives reporter gene expression in transgenic vertebrates in patterns reminiscent of the expression of vertebrate orthologues. Such instances are presumed to reflect the presence of conserved suites of binding sites in the regulatory regions of invertebrate and vertebrate orthologues, such that both regulatory elements can correctly interpret the trans-activating environment. Shuffling of binding sites has been suggested to lie behind loss of sequence conservation; however this has not been experimentally tested. Here we examine the underlying basis of enhancer activity for the Ciona intestinalis ??-crystallin gene, which drives expression in the lens of transgenic vertebrates despite the Ciona lineage predating the evolution of the lens. We construct an interactive gene regulatory network (GRN) for vertebrate lens development, allowing network interactions to be robustly catalogued and conserved network components and features to be identified. We show that a small number of binding motifs are necessary for Ciona ??-crystallin expression, and narrow down the likely factors that bind to these motifs. Several of these overlap with the conserved core of the vertebrate lens GRN, implicating these sites in cross species function. However when we test these motifs in a transgenic vertebrate they prove to be dispensable for reporter expression in the lens. These results show that current models depicting cross species enhancer function as dependent on conserved binding sites can be overly simplistic, with sound evolutionary inference requiring detailed dissection of underlying mechanisms.

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Cross-species molecular dissection across alcohol behavioral domains.

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Cross-species molecular dissection across alcohol behavioral domains.

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