Environment-dependent striatal gene expression in the BACHD rat model for Huntington disease
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ABSTRACT:
ORGANISM(S): Rattus norvegicus
PROVIDER: GSE107259 | GEO | 2018/04/13
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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Project description:Environment-dependent striatal gene expression in the BACHD rat model for Huntington disease
| PRJNA419484 | ENA
Project description:Huntington disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by a mutation in the huntingtin (HTT) gene which results in progressive neurodegeneration in the striatum, cortex, and eventually most brain areas. Despite being a monogenic disorder, environmental factors influence HD characteristics. Both human and mouse studies suggest that mutant HTT (mHTT) leads to gene expression changes that harbor potential to be modulated by the environment. Yet, the underlying mechanisms integrating environmental cues into the gene regulatory program have remained largely unclear. To better understand gene-environment interactions in the context of mHTT, we employed RNA-seq to examine effects of maternal separation (MS) and environmental enrichment (EE) on striatal gene expression during development of BACHD rats. We integrated our results with striatal consensus modules defined on HTT-CAG length and age-dependent co-expression gene networks to relate the environmental factors with disease progression. While mHTT was the main determinant of expression changes, both MS and EE were capable of modulating these disturbances, resulting in distinctive and in several cases opposing effects of MS and EE on consensus modules. This bivalent response to maternal separation and environmental enrichment may aid in explaining their distinct effects observed on disease phenotypes in animal models of HD and related neurodegenerative disorders.
| S-EPMC5895842 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The BACHD rat is a recently developed transgenic animal model of Huntington disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by extensive loss of striatal neurons. Cognitive impairments are common among patients, and characterization of similar deficits in animal models of the disease is therefore of interest. The present study assessed the BACHD rats' performance in the delayed alternation and the delayed non-matching to position test, two Skinner box-based tests of short-term memory function. The transgenic rats showed impaired performance in both tests, indicating general problems with handling basic aspects of the tests, while short-term memory appeared to be intact. Similar phenotypes have been found in rats with fronto-striatal lesions, suggesting that Huntington disease-related neuropathology might be present in the BACHD rats. Further analyses indicated that the performance deficit in the delayed alternation test might be due to impaired inhibitory control, which has also been implicated in Huntington disease patients. The study ultimately suggests that the BACHD rats might suffer from neuropathology and cognitive impairments reminiscent of those of Huntington disease patients.
| S-EPMC5207398 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited progressive neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by motor, cognitive, and psychiatric deficits as well as neurodegeneration and brain atrophy beginning in the striatum and the cortex and extending to other subcortical brain regions. The genetic cause is an expansion of the CAG repeat stretch in the HTT gene encoding huntingtin protein (htt). Here, we generated an HD transgenic rat model using a human bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC), which contains the full-length HTT genomic sequence with 97 CAG/CAA repeats and all regulatory elements. BACHD transgenic rats display a robust, early onset and progressive HD-like phenotype including motor deficits and anxiety-related symptoms. In contrast to BAC and yeast artificial chromosome HD mouse models that express full-length mutant huntingtin, BACHD rats do not exhibit an increased body weight. Neuropathologically, the distribution of neuropil aggregates and nuclear accumulation of N-terminal mutant huntingtin in BACHD rats is similar to the observations in human HD brains. Aggregates occur more frequently in the cortex than in the striatum and neuropil aggregates appear earlier than mutant htt accumulation in the nucleus. Furthermore, we found an imbalance in the striatal striosome and matrix compartments in early stages of the disease. In addition, reduced dopamine receptor binding was detectable by in vivo imaging. Our data demonstrate that this transgenic BACHD rat line may be a valuable model for further understanding the disease mechanisms and for preclinical pharmacological studies.
| S-EPMC6621569 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Foxp2 Overexpression in BACHD mice
| PRJNA414379 | ENA
Project description:Aims: While Huntingtonâs disease is classified as a neurological disorder, HD patients exhibit a high incidence of cardiovascular events leading to heart failure and death. In this study, we sought to better understand the cardiovascular phenotype of HD using the BACHD mouse model. Methods and Results: The age-related decline in cardiovascular function was assessed by echocardiograms, electrocardiograms, histological and microarray analysis. We found that structural and functional differences between WT and BACHD hearts start at 3mo of age and continue throughout life. The aged BACHD mice develop cardiac fibrosis. The BACHD mice exhibited adaptive physiological changes to chronic isoproterenol challenge; however, the treatment exacerbated fibrotic lesions in the heart. Gene expression analysis indicates a strong tilt toward apoptosis in the young mutant tissue as well as changes in genes involved in cellular metabolism and proliferation. With age, the number of genes with altered expression increased with the largest changes occurring in the cardiovascular disease and cellular metabolism clusters. Conclusions: The BACHD model of HD exhibit a number of changes in cardiovascular function that start early in the disease progress and may provide an explanation for the higher CV risk in HD. These changes are consistent with dysfunction in ANS regulation although the hearts did respond adaptively to β-adrenergic challenge. Gene expression pattern changes are subtle but suggests biomarkers focusing on apoptosis, metabolism, immune function are worth further exploration. Microarray-based gene expression analysis in tissue from transgenic mice and controls at different ages
2016-03-01 | E-GEOD-76593 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Aims: While Huntington’s disease is classified as a neurological disorder, HD patients exhibit a high incidence of cardiovascular events leading to heart failure and death. In this study, we sought to better understand the cardiovascular phenotype of HD using the BACHD mouse model. Methods and Results: The age-related decline in cardiovascular function was assessed by echocardiograms, electrocardiograms, histological and microarray analysis. We found that structural and functional differences between WT and BACHD hearts start at 3mo of age and continue throughout life. The aged BACHD mice develop cardiac fibrosis. The BACHD mice exhibited adaptive physiological changes to chronic isoproterenol challenge; however, the treatment exacerbated fibrotic lesions in the heart. Gene expression analysis indicates a strong tilt toward apoptosis in the young mutant tissue as well as changes in genes involved in cellular metabolism and proliferation. With age, the number of genes with altered expression increased with the largest changes occurring in the cardiovascular disease and cellular metabolism clusters. Conclusions: The BACHD model of HD exhibit a number of changes in cardiovascular function that start early in the disease progress and may provide an explanation for the higher CV risk in HD. These changes are consistent with dysfunction in ANS regulation although the hearts did respond adaptively to β-adrenergic challenge. Gene expression pattern changes are subtle but suggests biomarkers focusing on apoptosis, metabolism, immune function are worth further exploration.
2016-03-01 | GSE76593 | GEO
Project description:Rationale: Huntington disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor, cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms. HD is usually diagnosed by the appearance of motor deficits, resulting in skilled hand use disruption, gait abnormality, muscle wasting and choreatic movements. The BACHD transgenic rat model for HD represents a well-established transgenic rodent model of HD, offering the prospect of an in-depth characterization of the motor phenotype. Objective: The present study aims to characterize different aspects of motor function in BACHD rats, combining classical paradigms with novel high-throughput behavioral phenotyping. Methods: Wild-type (WT) and transgenic animals were tested longitudinally from 2 to 12 months of age. To measure fine motor control, rats were challenged with the pasta handling test and the pellet reaching test. To evaluate gross motor function, animals were assessed by using the holding bar and the grip strength tests. Spontaneous locomotor activity and circadian rhythmicity were assessed in an automated home-cage environment, namely the PhenoTyper. We then integrated existing classical methodologies to test motor function with automated home-cage assessment of motor performance. Results: BACHD rats showed strong impairment in muscle endurance at 2 months of age. Altered circadian rhythmicity and locomotor activity were observed in transgenic animals. On the other hand, reaching behavior, forepaw dexterity and muscle strength were unaffected. Conclusions: The BACHD rat model exhibits certain features of HD patients, like muscle weakness and changes in circadian behavior. We have observed modest but clear-cut deficits in distinct motor phenotypes, thus confirming the validity of this transgenic rat model for treatment and drug discovery purposes.
| S-EPMC5675855 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We used a chronic mild stress (CMS) protocol to separate susceptible-depression, susceptible-anxiety and insusceptible rat subgroups. Differential proteomes in the striatal were analyzed based on isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) labeling combined with mass spectrometry.
2021-05-19 | PXD026107 |
Project description:Huntington disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor, cognitive, psychiatric and metabolic symptoms. Animal models of HD show phenotypes that can be divided into similar categories, with the metabolic phenotype of certain models being characterized by obesity. Although interesting in terms of modeling metabolic symptoms of HD, the obesity phenotype can be problematic as it might confound the results of certain behavioral tests. This concerns the assessment of cognitive function in particular, as tests for such phenotypes are often based on food depriving the animals and having them perform tasks for food rewards. The BACHD rat is a recently established animal model of HD, and in order to ensure that behavioral characterization of these rats is done in a reliable way, a basic understanding of their physiology is needed. Here, we show that BACHD rats are obese and suffer from discrete developmental deficits. When assessing the motivation to lever push for a food reward, BACHD rats were found to be less motivated than wild type rats, although this phenotype was dependent on the food deprivation strategy. Specifically, the phenotype was present when rats of both genotypes were deprived to 85% of their respective free-feeding body weight, but not when deprivation levels were adjusted in order to match the rats' apparent hunger levels. The study emphasizes the importance of considering metabolic abnormalities as a confounding factor when performing behavioral characterization of HD animal models.
| S-EPMC4140820 | biostudies-literature