Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is a chronic, relapsing syndrome diagnosed by a heteroge- neous set of behavioral signs and symptoms. There are no laboratory tests that provide direct objective evidence for diagnosis. Microarray and RNA-Seq technologies enable genome-wide transcriptome profiling at low costs and provide an opportunity to identify bio- markers to facilitate diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of patients. However, access to brain tissue in living patients is not possible. Blood contains cellular and extracellular RNAs that provide disease-relevant information for some brain diseases. We hypothesized that blood gene expression profiles can be used to diagnose AUD. We profiled brain (prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hypothalamus) and blood gene expression levels in C57BL/6J mice using RNA-seq one week after chronic intermittent ethanol (CIE) exposure, a mouse model of alcohol dependence. We found a high degree of preservation (rho range: [0.50, 0.67]) between blood and brain transcript levels. There was small overlap between blood and brain DEGs, and considerable overlap of gene networks perturbed after CIE related to cell- cell signaling (e.g., GABA and glutamate receptor signaling), immune responses (e.g., anti- gen presentation), and protein processing / mitochondrial functioning (e.g., ubiquitination, oxidative phosphorylation). Blood gene expression data were used to train classifiers (logis- tic regression, random forest, and partial least squares discriminant analysis), which were highly accurate at predicting alcohol dependence status (maximum AUC: 90.1%). These results suggest that gene expression profiles from peripheral blood samples contain a bio- logical signature of alcohol dependence that can discriminate between CIE and Air subjects.
Authors:
Laura B Ferguson, Amanda J Roberts, R Dayne Mayfield, Robert O Messing
The current study used two inbred mouse strains, C57BL/6 J and A/J, to investigate the genetics of behavioral responses to fentanyl. Mice were tested for conditioned place preference and fentanyl-induced locomotor activity. C57BL/6J mice formed a conditioned place preference to fentanyl injections and fentanyl increased their activity. Neither effect was noted in A/J mice. We conducted RNA-sequencing on the nucleus accumbens of mice used for fentanyl-induced locomotor activity. Surprisingly, we noted few differentially expressed genes using treatment as the main factor. However many genes differed between strains.
Authors:
Samuel J Harp, Mariangela Martini, Will Rosenow, Larry D Mesner, Hugh Johnson, Charles R Farber, Emilie F Rissman
Authors develop a brain reward circuit-wide atlas of opioid-induced transcriptional regulation by combining RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and heroin self-administration in male mice modeling multiple OUD-relevant conditions: acute heroin exposure, chronic heroin intake, context-induced drug-seeking following abstinence, and relapse. Bioinformatics analysis of this rich dataset identified numerous patterns of transcriptional regulation, with both region-specific and pan-circuit biological domains affected by heroin. Integration of RNA-seq data. This design enabled investigation of the transcriptomic landscape in multiple conditions that model distinct aspects of the OUD syndrome: first-ever heroin exposure (SH), ongoing/early withdrawal from heroin intake (H24), context-induced heroin-seeking following protracted abstinence (HS), and a combination of drug-induced and context-induced heroin-seeking representative of a relapse-like episode (HH). with OUD-relevant behavioral outcomes uncovered region-specific molecular changes and biological processes that predispose to OUD vulnerability.
Authors:
Caleb J Browne, Rita Futamura, Angélica Minier-Toribio, Emily M Hicks, Aarthi Ramakrishnan, Freddyson J Martínez-Rivera, Molly Estill, Arthur Godino, Eric M Parise, Angélica Torres-Berrío, Ashley M Cunningham, Peter J Hamilton, Deena M Walker, Laura M Huckins, Yasmin L Hurd, Li Shen, Eric J Nestler
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