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Circuit-wide transcriptional profiling reveals region specific gene co-expression networks regulating depression susceptibility

ABSTRACT: Depression is a complex and heterogeneous disorder and a leading contributor to the global burden of of disease. Most previous research has focused on individual brain regions and individual genes that contribute to depression. However, emerging evidence in both humans and animal models suggests that dysregulated circuit function and gene expression across multiple brain regions drive depressive phenotypes. Here we use a bioinformatics approach intersecting differential expression analysis with weighted gene co-expression network analysis to identify transcriptional networks that regulate susceptibility to depressive-like symptoms in mice. We performed RNA-sequencing on multiple brain regions from control animals and those either susceptible or resilient to chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) at multiple time points after defeat. We bioinformatically identified several transcriptional networks that regulate depression susceptibility, and in vivo manipulations of these networks confirmed their functional significance at the levels of gene transcription, synaptic regulation, and behavior. Our findings reveal novel transcriptional networks that control stress susceptibility and offer fundamentally new leads for antidepressant drug discovery.

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE72343 | GEO | 2016/05/12

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA293822

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Despite depression being one of the most prevalent and debilitating disorders worldwide, it has been difficult to understand its pathophysiology and to develop more effective treatments. Maladaptive transcriptional regulation within limbic neural circuits, including reward processing regions such as the nucleus accumbens (NAc), in response to chronic stress is thought to be a major contributor to the development of the syndrome. Epigenetic events?in particular, histone writers and erasers?that alter chromatin structure to regulate programs of gene expression have increasingly been associated with depression-related behavioral abnormalities in animal models and in depressed humans examined postmortem. However, very little is known about the ATP-dependent chromatin remodelers that control nucleosome positioning and the packing state of chromatin. Here we show that the ACF complex, part of the ISWI family of chromatin remodelers, is persistently and selectively upregulated in the NAc of mice that are susceptible to chronic social stress, as well as in the NAc of depressed human. We further establish that ACF induction is both necessary and sufficient for susceptibility to stress-induced depressive-like behaviors. Using ChIP-seq, we demonstrate that altered ACF binding after chronic stress is strongly correlated with altered nucleosome positioning, in particular, around the transcriptional start sites of affected genes. These alterations in ACF binding and nucleosome repositioning are associated with repressed expression of a subset of genes in animals that are susceptible to chronic stress. Together, these findings establish that active ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling by the ACF complex is a key regulator in the repression of genes that mediate susceptibility to social stress, and provide novel candidate targets for improved therapeutics of depression and other stress-related disorders. c57bl/6 mice underwent chronic social defeat stress (CSDS), and social interaction test was used to separate animals into control, susceptible and resilient groups. Nucleus accumbens (NAc) tissue was collected 48 hours after the last defeat session, and then Acf1, SNF2H ChIP-seq or H3 MNase-seq were performed based on the control, susceptible, and resilient groups. Three sequencing replicates were performed on each group.

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Circuit-wide transcriptional profiling reveals region specific gene co-expression networks regulating depression susceptibility

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