Project description:Autophagy deficiency caused by conditional knockout of Atg7 results in severe hepatitis accompanied by abundant accumulation of p62. p62 stablizes Nrf2 by disrupting the association between Keap1 and Nrf2. To understand the pathogenesis of hepatitis under the autophagy deficiency, we examined gene expression profiles of livers from Atg7-null, Nrf2-null and Atg7-Nrf2 double mutant mice. Eight week old Atg7F/F:Mx1-Cre mice and Atg7F/F:Mx1-Cre:Nrf2-/- together with control mice were injected with pIpC. At 4 weeks after pIpC injection, total RNAs were purified from each mouse liver.
Project description:Autophagy deficiency caused by conditional knockout of Atg7 results in severe hepatitis accompanied by abundant accumulation of p62. p62 stablizes Nrf2 by disrupting the association between Keap1 and Nrf2. To understand the pathogenesis of hepatitis under the autophagy deficiency, we examined gene expression profiles of livers from Atg7-null, Nrf2-null and Atg7-Nrf2 double mutant mice.
Project description:Engrams are considered to be substrates for memory storage, and the functional dysregulation of the engrams leads to cognition impairment.However, the cellular basis for these maladaptive changes lead to the forgetting of memories remains unclear. Here we found that the expression of autophagy protein 7 (Atg7) mRNA was dramatically upregulated in aged DG engrams, and led to the forgetting of contextual fear memory and the activation of surrounding microglia.To determine mechanism by which autophagy in DG engrams activates the surrounding microglia, mice were co-injected AAV-RAM-Cre either with AAV-Dio-Atg7-Flag or AAV-Dio- EYFP in dorsal dentate gyrus to overexpress ATG7 in the DG memory engrams. Microglia were separated using magnetic-activated cell sorting and subjected to RNA-Seq in dorsal hippocampus .Bioinformatics analysis shown overexpression of Atg7 in dorsal DG memory engrams caused an increase in the expression of Tlr2 in the surrounding microglia.Depletion of Toll-like receptor 2/4 (TLR2/4) in DG microglia prohibited excessive microglial activation and synapse elimination induced by the overexpression of ATG7 in DG engrams, and thus prevented forgetting. Furthermore, the expression of Rac1, a Rho-GTPases which regulates active forgetting in both fly and mice, was upregulated in aged engrams. Optogentic activation of Rac1 in DG engrams promoted the autophagy of the engrams, the activation of microglia, and the forgetting of fear memory. Invention of the Atg7 expression and microglia activation attenuated forgetting induced by activation of Rac1 in DG engrams. Together, our findings revealed autophagy-dependent synapse elimination of DG engrams by microglia as a novel forgetting mechanism.
Project description:To investigate the differences in microRNA expression profiles between fibrotic and normal livers, we performed microRNA microarrays for total RNA extracts isolated from mouse livers treated with carbontetrachloride (CCl4) or corn-oil for 10 weeks (n=3/group). MicroRNAs were considered to have significant differences in expression level when the expression difference showed more than two-fold change between the experimental and control groups at p<0.05. We found that 12 miRNAs were differentially expressed in CCl4-induced fibrotic liver.