ABSTRACT: Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA), the most common inherited ataxia in humans, is caused by recessive mutations that lead to a substantial reduction in the levels of frataxin (FXN), a mitochondrial iron binding protein. FRDA is a multi-system disease, involving multiple neurological, cardiac, and metabolic manifestations whose study is hindered by a paucity of animal models that faithfully recapitulate human disease features. We developed an inducible (doxycycline) mouse model of Fxn deficiency (FRDAkd) that enabled us to control the onset, progression and potential rescue of disease phenotypes by the modulation of Fxn levels using RNA interference. We found that systemic knockdown of Fxn in adult mice led to multiple features paralleling those observed in human patients, including electrophysiological, cellular, biochemical and structural phenotypes associated with cardiomyopathy, as well as dorsal root ganglion and retinal neuronal degeneration and reduced axonal size and myelin sheath thickness in the spinal cord. Fxn knockdown mice also exhibited other abnormalities similar to patients, including weight loss, reduced locomotor activity, ataxia, reduced muscular strength, and reduced survival, as well as genome-wide transcriptome changes. We performed microarray analysis of heart, cerebellum and dorsal root ganglia in FRDAkd mouse model of frataxin deficiency, and found several molecular pathway dysfunction via genome-wide transcriptome analyses. We also found that, upon restoration of near wild-type FXN levels, we observed significant recovery of function, pathology and associated transcriptomic changes, even after significant motor dysfunction was observed. The rapidity of Fxn expression due to doxycycline removal and its robust correction of various parameters, even when restored after the onset of motor dysfunction, makes this FRDAkd mouse model an appealing potential preclinical tool for testing various therapeutics for FRDA.
