Topic: immediate-early genes

The encoding or retrieval of a contextual fear memory recruits the activity of thousands of neurons across the mammalian brain. This ensemble of cells is often identified by immediate-early genes (IEGs), which are expressed following neuronal activity, but the extent to which the expression pattern of one IEG reflects another is unclear. Here, we examined the IEGs Arc/Arg3.1 and c-Fos across several brain regions during fear memory encoding or retrieval. Mice were administered a 3-shock contextual fear conditioning (CFC) paradigm and sacrificed 1h later (encoding), 1 h after context re-exposur

Immediate-early genes (IEGs) are a class of activity-regulated genes (ARGs) that are transiently and rapidly activated in the absence of de novo protein synthesis in response to neuronal activity. We explored the role of IEGs in genetic networks to pinpoint potential drug targets for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Using a combination of network analysis and genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics we show that (1) IEGs exert greater topological influence across different human and mouse gene networks compared to other ARGs, (2) ARGs are sparsely involved in diseases and significantly