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Juvenile stress produces long-lasting changes in hippocampal DISC1, GSK3ß and NRG1 expression

Molecular Psychiatry volume 19, pages 854–855 (2014)Cite this article

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Exposure to adverse events early in life increases the likelihood of developing neuropsychiatric disorders in adulthood.1 Relatively little is known about the biological basis of this effect, but one hypothesis is that stress has sustained effects on the expression of genes implicated in psychiatric disorders. We investigated the effects of pre-pubertal ‘juvenile’ stress (JS) on the expression of three candidate genes for neuropsychiatric disorders (disrupted-in-schizophrenia I (DISC1), glycogen synthase kinase-3ß (GSK3ß), and neuregulin 1 (NRG1, types I, II and III)), in an animal model.2 These genes have independently been implicated in risk for mental disorder and show convergent effects on the Wnt signalling pathway.3,4 We hypothesised that JS would lead to sustained changes in the expression of these genes and to altered affective behaviour in adulthood.

We next investigated the effects of JS on the expression in adulthood (PND 70) of mRNAs encoding DISC1, GSK3ß and NRG1 (type I, II and III) in the hippocampus of 12 stressed and 12 control animals using qPCR probes (see Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Methods). JS correlated with significant increases in hippocampal expression of DISC1 (Figure 1b, ANOVA: P=0.02), decreased GSK3ß (Figure 1c, ANOVA: P=0.01) and decreased NRG1 type III (Figure 1d, ANOVA: P=0.04) in males and females. There were no changes in NRG1 type I (Figure 1e, ANOVA: P=0.46) or type II (Figure 1f, ANOVA: P=0.51) mRNAs.

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Author notes

  1. K L Evans and J Hall: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Cardiovascular Science, QMRI, University of Edinburgh, 47 Little France Crescent, Edinburgh, UK

    N M Brydges, J Seckl, M C Holmes & J Hall

  2. Medical Genetics Section, Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, The University of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh,, UK

    H S Torrance & K L Evans

  3. Division for Psychiatry, Centre for Clinical Brain Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    J Hall

  4. Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute, Hadyn Ellis Building, Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff, UK

    J Hall

Authors
  1. N M Brydges
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  2. J Seckl
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  3. H S Torrance
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  4. M C Holmes
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  5. K L Evans
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  6. J Hall
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to N M Brydges.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Brydges, N., Seckl, J., Torrance, H. et al. Juvenile stress produces long-lasting changes in hippocampal DISC1, GSK3ß and NRG1 expression. Mol Psychiatry 19, 854–855 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2013.193

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