Increased expression of tyrosine hydroxylase and anomalous neurites in catecholaminergic neurons of ATF-2 null mice

Parkinson's Disease Master Regulators on Substantia Nigra and Frontal Cortex and Their Use for Drug Repositioning

Parkinson's disease (PD) is among the most prevalent neurodegenerative diseases. Available evidences support the view of PD as a complex disease, being the outcome of interactions between genetic and environmental factors. In face of diagnosis and therapy challenges, and the elusive PD etiology, the use of alternative methodological approaches for the elucidation of the disease pathophysiological mechanisms and proposal of novel potential therapeutic interventions has become increasingly necessary. In the present study, we first reconstructed the transcriptional regulatory networks (TN), centered on transcription factors (TF), of two brain regions affected in PD, the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) and the frontal cortex (FCtx). Then, we used case-control studies data from these regions to identify TFs working as master regulators (MR) of the disease, based on region-specific TNs. Twenty-nine regulatory units enriched with differentially expressed genes were identified for the SNc, and twenty for the FCtx, all of which were considered MR candidates for PD. Three consensus MR candidates were found for SNc and FCtx, namely ATF2, SLC30A9, and ZFP69B. In order to search for novel potential therapeutic interventions, we used these consensus MR candidate signatures as input to the Connectivity Map (CMap), a computational drug repositioning webtool. This analysis resulted in the identification of four drugs that reverse the expression pattern of all three MR consensus simultaneously, benperidol, harmaline, tubocurarine chloride, and vorinostat, thus suggested as novel potential PD therapeutic interventions.

JNK-mediated activation of ATF2 contributes to dopaminergic neurodegeneration in the MPTP mouse model of Parkinson's disease

The c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)/c-Jun pathway is a known critical regulator of dopaminergic neuronal death in Parkinson's disease (PD) and is considered a potential target for neuroprotective therapy. However, whether JNK is activated within dopaminergic neurons remains controversial, and whether JNK acts through downstream effectors other than c-Jun to promote dopaminergic neuronal death remains unclear. In this study, we confirm that JNK but not p38 is activated in dopaminergic neurons after 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-intoxication. Furthermore, within the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra in MPTP-treated mice, JNK2/3 phosphorylates threonine 69 (Thr69) of Activating transcription factor-2 (ATF2), a transcription factor of the ATF/CREB family, whereas the phosphorylation of Thr71 is constitutive and remains unchanged. The increased phosphorylation of ATF2 on Thr69 by JNK in the MPTP mouse model suggests a functional relationship between the transcriptional activation of ATF2 and dopaminergic neuron death. By using dopaminergic neuron-specific conditional ATF2 mutant mice, we found that either partial or complete deletion of the ATF2 DNA-binding domain in dopaminergic neurons markedly alleviates the MPTP-induced dopaminergic neurodegeneration, indicating that the activation of ATF2 plays a detrimental role in neuropathogenesis in PD. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that JNK-mediated ATF2 activation contributes to dopaminergic neuronal death in an MPTP model of PD.

Loss of ATF2 function leads to cranial motoneuron degeneration during embryonic mouse development

The AP-1 family transcription factor ATF2 is essential for development and tissue maintenance in mammals. In particular, ATF2 is highly expressed and activated in the brain and previous studies using mouse knockouts have confirmed its requirement in the cerebellum as well as in vestibular sense organs. Here we present the analysis of the requirement for ATF2 in CNS development in mouse embryos, specifically in the brainstem. We discovered that neuron-specific inactivation of ATF2 leads to significant loss of motoneurons of the hypoglossal, abducens and facial nuclei. While the generation of ATF2 mutant motoneurons appears normal during early development, they undergo caspase-dependent and independent cell death during later embryonic and foetal stages. The loss of these motoneurons correlates with increased levels of stress activated MAP kinases, JNK and p38, as well as aberrant accumulation of phosphorylated neurofilament proteins, NF-H and NF-M, known substrates for these kinases. This, together with other neuropathological phenotypes, including aberrant vacuolisation and lipid accumulation, indicates that deficiency in ATF2 leads to neurodegeneration of subsets of somatic and visceral motoneurons of the brainstem. It also confirms that ATF2 has a critical role in limiting the activities of stress kinases JNK and p38 which are potent inducers of cell death in the CNS.

A novel function of microRNA let-7d in regulation of galectin-3 expression in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder rat brain

In this study we investigated the locomotor activity and non-selective attention in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) with control Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats, which were employed as an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) model. In open-field test and làt maze, SHR rats were found to be much more spontaneously active than WKY rats. As compared with WKY rats, a lower level of galectin-3 was observed in SHR brain prefrontal cortex (PFC), which was the major affected brain area of ADHD. Through miRNA microarray screening, rno-let-7d was noted to be solely upregulated in SHR PFC. Interestingly, rno-let-7d had a binding site at galectin-3 mRNA and was shown to regulate galectin-3 3' untranslated region (UTR) directly. Mutation of galectin-3 3'UTR by one nucleotide of the seed sequence prevented rno-let-7d regulation of the 3' UTR completely. Although rno-let-7d did not directly regulate tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) 3'UTR, the level of galectin-3 was important for cAMP response element binding protein, the major transcript factor for TH gene. Either overexpression or downexpression of galectin-3 could result in modulation of TH expression in both PC12H and PC12L cells. In conclusion, our data suggested a novel function of rno-let-7d in regulation of galectin-3 and in ADHD development. Rno-let-7d, which is increased in the PFC of SHR brain, negatively regulated galectin-3, which is coupled with TH expression regulation.