Project description:Some of the most common neurodegenerative disorders have a strong association with aging. Curiously, these conditions tend to involve specific areas of the central and peripheral nervous system, at least initially. For example, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis preferentially targets spinal motor neurons and spares oculomotor neurons. This suggests that aging has divergent effects on brain stem and spinal cord, a factor that may explain differential susceptibility to certain neurodegenerative disorders. Therefore, for this study we asked whether aging induces a change in the evolution of the transcriptome of oculomotor nucleus (OMN) throughout the lifespan which would be different than that of the spinal cord aging. Age induced a transcriptome shift to a pattern consistent with inflammation/immune response in both OMN and spinal cord. However, the response was more dramatic in the spinal cord. On the other hand, age repressed genes coding ion channels and transporters in OMN and cytoskeletal proteins in the spinal cord. The results indicate that OMN and spinal cord transcriptomes change differently with age. The results give an initial glimpse of how tissue-specific gene expression patterns may underlie the differential susceptibility to age-related neuromuscular dysfunction. Experiment Overall Design: Total RNA was obtained with TRIzol (Invitrogen Carlsbad, CA) following the manufacturers recommended protocol. Tissues from 4 animals were combined into each RNA sample to decrease inter-subject variability. Biotinylated cRNA samples were hybridized to Affymetrix Rat Genome RA230 gene chips (n=18 chips) described previously [McMullen et al. 2004]. Microarrays were washed and stained with a streptavidin-bound marker and scanned. Data were analyzed with Affymetrix Microarray Suite 5.0 software. Only genes with consistent absent/present calls in all four independent replicates per group were considered for further analysis. Comparisons used the 6-mo transcriptome as the baseline and the one-sided Wilcoxonâ??s signed rank test to estimate â??increase/no change/ decreaseâ?? difference calls for each pair-wise comparison. Only difference calls consistent in all pair-wise comparisons and with average changes > 1.70 were considered significant, resulting in a conservative list of genes with changed expression levels. Functional classification of genes was based on an extensive literature review.

Project description:Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) spares the ocular motor system. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the oculomotor neurons are intrinsically protected in ALS. Using high-density cDNA microarrays, we examined the transcriptome of oculomotor nuclei and spinal cords in mice expressing a human mutant SOD1, the SOD1(G93A) ALS model, at 6 and 10 weeks of age. Comparison of gene expression profiles of these pre-symptomatic SOD1(G93A) mice showed a shift to a proapoptotic state in spinal cords, while the opposite was true in oculomotor nuclei. Seventeen members of the A, B, C and D Hox clusters increased in oculomotor nuclei from 6 to 10 weeks of age; 15 were downregulated in spinal cord. Although only the first 4 classes of a given Hox cluster (e.g., Hoxa1-4) are normally expressed in the developing hindbrain, we found differential expression of mostly the latter classes in both oculomotor nuclei and spinal cords. Also, semaphorin 3B was expressed at 28-fold greater levels in oculomotor nuclei and 61-fold less in spinal cords in 10-week old SOD1(G93A) mice compared to 6-week old mice. Semaphorins 3A and 3E were also differentially regulated. Comparison of gene expression profiles of control SOD1 mice of 6 and 10 weeks of age did not show these changes. Based on these results, we rejected our hypothesis and conclude that the oculomotor nuclei actively adapt to the ALS-inducing mutation.,Supported by NEI and ALSA. <br>Overall design<br>Oligonucleotide microarray studies using the Affymetrix system were conducted as described earlier (McMullen et al., 2004). Biotinylated cRNA was hybridized to Affymetrix Mouse Expression Set 430A GeneChips. Then, the microarrays were washed and stained with a streptavidin-bound marker, and scanned with a laser scanner. Resulting microarray data were analyzed with Affymetrix Microarray Suite 5.0 software. Only those genes with consistent absent/present calls in the three independent replicates per group were considered for further analyses. Comparisons were crossed such that each oculomotor nuclei sample was compared with each spinal cord sample at the corresponding age. The Affymetrix software uses the one-sided Wilcoxons signed rank test to estimate increase/no change/decrease difference calls and fold-changes for each pair-wise comparison. Only difference calls consistent in all pair-wise comparisons and with average changes greater than 2-fold were considered significant, resulting in a conservative list of genes with changed expression levels.

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