Topic: immediate early genes

Olfaction is a crucial sense for many species, influencing behavioral responses like mating and reproduction. A significant dopaminergic (DA) population is found in the mouse main olfactory bulb (OB), with inhibitory interneurons identified by tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) expression and divided into two major groups (i.e., small and large cells) according to their shape, generation time, and biophysical characteristics. Although it is known that salient stimuli activate midbrain DA neurons, it is unclear if OB DA cells are involved in processing ethologically relevant odorants, especially those a

Exposure to novelty around the time of weak training enhances long-term memory (Ballarini et al., 2009). This enhancement is conserved across rodent models to humans (Fenker et al., 2009). It was proposed that synapses have been ‘tagged’ during the weak training and captured later by the strong event, i.e. novelty exposure (Moncada et al., 2007; Lisman et al., 2011). Concurrently, novelty induces dopamine and noradrenaline release in the hippocampus which similarly enhances memories (Moncada et al., 2011; Duszkiewicz et al., 2019). However, the synaptic and molecular changes induced by novelty

Spatial cognition is a field of research that investigates the basis of human and animal navigation and orientation. Many animals possess excellent spatial abilities like homing and migration that can be found across the animal kingdom. The hippocampus is an essential brain area for memory formation and spatial cognition in both mammals and birds, which has been shown physiologically in the form of place and head-direction cells as well as functionally through for example ablation studies. However, in contrast to mammals, the precise pattern of hippocampal spatial processing is still rather un

It is widely accepted that experience-dependent plasticity is required for memory formation. However, underlying transcriptional and epigenetic changes are poorly understood.This project aims to deepen our understanding of the gene regulatory dynamics underpinning memory formation and how it is orchestrated with synaptic plasticity.To this end, we first characterized the immediate early genes (IEGs) and the secondary response genes (SRGs) at several time points after aversive learning from FACS-isolated cFOS-expressing mouse amygdalar nuclei. We performed RNA-seq to investigate the experience-

Activity-driven transcription is a crucial step in neuronal plasticity processes. We found that during neuronal activation induced by the proepileptic drug kainic acid, there is a dramatic genomic redistribution of the transcriptional cofactors CBP and p300. These cofactors leave their default location at enhancer and promoter regions related with cell identity to occupy regulatory regions at activity-induced genes. In parallel with these changes, we also detect changes in the levels of H3K27ac and chromatin accessibility accordingly with the redistribution and modification of the epigenetic c

Developmental and Epileptic Encephalopathy 9 (DEE9) is a debilitating neurological condition with no effective cure characterized by epilepsy, intellectual disability and autism. DEE9 is due to mutations in the X-chromosome gene PCDH19 that encodes protocadherin-19 (PCDH19), a cell adhesion molecule. We recently reported that PCDH19 undergoes an activity-dependent proteolytic cleavage that generates a cytosolic C-terminal fragment (CTF), which goes in the nucleus and regulates the expression of a subset of immediate early genes in primary hippocampal neurons.The aim of this project is to inves