Resources
Authors & Affiliations
Hiba Zaidan, Jennifer Blaze, Magnus Kummerfeld, Katarzyna Winek, Hermona Soreq, Schahram Akbarian, Inna Gaisler-Salomon
Abstract
Pre-reproductive stress affects behavior as well as mRNA and microRNA (miRNA) expression in adolescent female rats and their offspring in a sex-dependent-manner. Transfer RNAs (tRNAs), non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) consisting of 70-90 nucleotides, play a role in regulating protein translation and were recently implicated in stress-related brain function and transgenerational information transfer. tRNAs may be cleaved into tRNA halves or fragmented into smaller tRNA fragments (tRFs). Here, we asked whether pre-reproductive chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) impacts the expression of full-length tRNAs, tRNA-halves and tRFs in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and blood of female rats and their offspring. Furthermore, we explored tRNA/tRFs expression patterns in the female germline.Adolescent female rats underwent CUS for 7 days. PFC, blood, and oocytes were extracted 4 or 14 days later. PFC and blood were also collected from neonate offspring. tRNA, tRFs and miRNA levels were measured using YAMAT-seq, sncRNA-seq, and RT-PCR. We found differences in the levels of tRNA isodecoders and tRFs in PFC at both time-points. tRFs were detected in oocytes 2 weeks after stress, but were mostly unaltered by stress exposure. The expression of several miRNA molecules in oocytes was altered by stress. Interestingly, PRS had no effect on the expression of tRNA isodecoders, but did affect tRF and miRNA expression patterns in offspring PFC.Combined with our previous findings, these data signify that stress affects both miRNA and tRNA/tRF expression in the brain, and that sncRNA changes in blood and oocytes may play a role in the intergenerational transfer of stress-related information.