Down-Regulation of Dendritic Spine and Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase 67 Expressions in the Reelin Haploinsufficient Heterozygous Reeler Mouse

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Down-Regulation of Dendritic Spine and Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase 67 Expressions in the Reelin Haploinsufficient Heterozygous Reeler Mouse Down-regulation of dendritic spine and glutamic acid decarboxylase 67 expressions in the reelin haploinsufficient heterozygous reeler mouse Wen Sheng Liu*, Christine Pesold*, Miguel A. Rodriguez*, Giovanni Carboni*, James Auta*, Pascal Lacor*, John Larson*, Brian G. Condie†, Alessandro Guidotti*, and Erminio Costa*‡ *Psychiatric Institute, Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 60612; and †Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Departments of Medicine and Cellular Biology and Anatomy, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA 30912 Contributed by Erminio Costa, December 22, 2000 Heterozygous reeler mice (HRM) haploinsufficient for reelin ex- heterozygote reeler mice (HRM) and in heterozygote GAD67 Ϸ press 50% of the brain reelin content of wild-type mice, but are knockout mice (HG67M) and compared them to their respective phenotypically different from both wild-type mice and homozy- wild-type background mice (WTM). In the present study, we gous reeler mice. They exhibit, (i) a down-regulation of glutamic have also quantified the number of neurons immunopositive for acid decarboxylase 67 (GAD67)-positive neurons in some but not reelin in the motor area of the frontoparietal cortex (FPC) of every cortical layer of frontoparietal cortex (FPC), (ii) an increase of HRM, as well as the total number of neurons immunopositive for neuronal packing density and a decrease of cortical thickness NeuN and the number of glial cells stained by Nissl (13) because of neuropil hypoplasia, (iii) a decrease of dendritic spine expressed in each of the six layers of this cortical area. In WTM, expression density on basal and apical dendritic branches of motor HRM, and HG67M, we have also quantified the laminar expres- FPC layer III pyramidal neurons, and (iv) a similar decrease in sion of GAD67-immunopositive neurons and the dendritic spine dendritic spines expressed on the basal dendrite branches of CA1 density expressed by pyramidal neurons of layer III FPC and of pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus. To establish whether the CA1 hippocampus. defect of GAD67 down-regulation observed in HRM is responsible for neuropil hypoplasia and decreased dendritic spine density, we Materials and Methods studied heterozygous GAD67 knockout mice (HG67M). These mice Colonies of HRM and HG67M. We have established an HRM exhibited a down-regulation of GAD67 mRNA expression in FPC breeding colony (obtained from The Jackson Laboratory) and (about 50%), but they expressed normal amounts of reelin and had more recently an HG67M colony (obtained from the Institute of no neuropil hypoplasia or down-regulation of dendritic spine Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Augusta, GA). HRM expression. These findings, coupled with electron-microscopic ob- (B6C3Fe strain) express a normal and a defective reelin allele servations that reelin colocalizes with integrin receptors on den- with a deletion of approximately 150 kb at the 3Ј end (Edinburg dritic spines, suggest that reelin may be a factor in the dynamic mutation) (14), and HG67M are heterozygous for a targeted NEUROBIOLOGY expression of cortical dendritic spines perhaps by promoting inte- allele of GAD67 (15). HG67M were originally on a mixed grin receptor clustering. These findings are interesting because the 129͞C57BL6J background and have been backcrossed for four brain neurochemical and neuroanatomical phenotypic traits exhib- to five generations with HRM background. ited by the HRM are in several ways similar to those found in The offspring of both heterozygous mice were genotyped by postmortem brains of psychotic patients. PCR as previously described for reelin (16) and GAD67 (17). The primer sequences (from 5Ј-3Ј) for reelin were, forward: taatct- rain postmortem studies from patients with schizophrenia gtcctcactctgcc; reverse: acagttgacataccttaatc; reverse mutated: Breveal a characteristic pattern of neuroanatomical and neu- tgcattaatgtgcagtgttgtc. The primer sequences for GAD67 were, rochemical abnormalities including: (i) enlarged cerebral ven- forward: tagaagctctcccggcacagctctc; reverse: gcgcaggttggtagtat- tricles (1, 2), (ii) altered cortical distribution of NADPH- taggatccg; reverse mutated: cgtgttcgaattcgccaatgacaagac. The diaphorase positive cells (3), (iii) decreased cortical thickness WTM, HRM, or HG67M used in the experiments were 60- to (4), (iv) increased cell-packing density associated with a neuropil 80-day-old males and were randomly sampled from several hypoplasia in absence of gliosis (5), (v) decreased expression of contemporaneous litters. dendritic spine in frontal, temporal, and subicular cortex (5–7), and (v) decreased expression of glutamic acid decarboxylase 67 Quantitative Reverse Transcription–PCR Analysis of Reelin, GAD67, and (GAD67) mRNA in prefrontal cortex neurons, particularly evi- GAD65 mRNAs. Primers and internal standards to quantify reelin dent in layers II and III (8–11). mRNA were previously described (17); the amplification primers Patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder with psychosis used were forward base pairs 9211–9231 and reverse base pairs express about 50% of the normal brain reelin mRNA levels in 9549–9569 (Gen Bank accession no. HSU79716). Primers for every cortical structure so far investigated, as well as in hip- GAD67 were: forward 1855–1878; reverse 2246–2269 base pairs pocampus, cerebellum, and caudate nucleus (9, 10). Although (Gen Bank accession no. M81883); the internal standard con- the number of GABAergic neurons that express reelin in tained a BglII restriction endonuclease, which on digestion prefrontal and temporal cortices (9, 10) and in the hippocampus generated fragments of 199 and 216 base pairs. Primers for (12) of these patients is reduced, the number of these interneu- rons is unchanged (8). Thus, it has been suggested that the decrease of reelin in neurons is probably because of the down- Abbreviations: GAD67, glutamic acid decarboxylase 67; HRM, heterozygous reeler mouse; WTM, wild-type mice; FPC, frontoparietal cortex; HG67M, heterozygous GAD67 knockout regulation in the expression of GAD67 mRNA and protein in mice. neurons rather than a reduction of the number of neurons per se ‡To whom reprint requests should be addressed at: 1601 West Taylor Street, M͞C 912, (9, 10, 12). To evaluate whether the down-regulation of GAD67 Psychiatric Institute, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 60612. E-mail: [email protected]. mRNA expression is associated with a down-regulation of reelin The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by page charge payment. This expression, we studied the expression of the mRNAs encoding article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. for reelin and GAD67 in the brain of reelin haploinsufficient §1734 solely to indicate this fact. www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.051614698 PNAS ͉ March 13, 2001 ͉ vol. 98 ͉ no. 6 ͉ 3477–3482 Downloaded by guest on September 26, 2021 ␮ GAD65 were: forward 82–103; reverse 507–532 (Gen Bank Table 1. Reelin, GAD67 and GAD65 mRNA levels (attomol/ g total accession no. M72422); the internal standard contains an XbaI RNA) in FPC of WTM, HRM and HG67M restriction endonuclease, which on digestion generated frag- Type of mice Reelin GAD67 GAD65 ments of 215 and 235 base pairs. The assay was conducted as described by Grayson and Ikonomovic (18). WTM 190 Ϯ 9.0 7.0 Ϯ 0.80 48 Ϯ 14 HRM 99 Ϯ 16* 4.2 Ϯ 0.59* 40 Ϯ 12 Ϯ Ϯ Ϯ Immunohistochemistry. The brains used in these studies were ob- HG67M 145 24 3.2 0.38* 42 11 tained from mice anesthetized for about 1 min in a CO2 chamber Mean Ϯ SEM for WTM (n ϭ 6), HRM (n ϭ 6), and HG67M(n ϭ 4). Student’s and perfused intracardially with 10 ml of PBS followed by 10 ml of t test, two-tailed. *, P Ͻ 0.01. ice-cold fixative (for light microscopy: 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS; for Golgi impregnation: 4% paraformaldehyde ϩ 0.25% glutaraldehyde in PBS). Brains were removed and left in fresh studied under the Zeiss Axioskope microscope at ϫ40 objective fixative for 24 h at 4°C before storage in 30% sucrose at 4°C. with a video camera. Forty-micrometer sections were cut with a cryostat, and For the quantification of dendritic spine expression density. diaminobenzidine immunostaining was performed as previously Three-dimensional reconstruction of dendrites and their spines at described (17). The following antibodies were used: (i) mouse high magnification was obtained by using a Zeiss Axioskope monoclonal antibody G-10 (1:1,000), which was raised against connected to a live-image monitor. Only pyramidal neurons in layer the N-terminal region of Reelin (amino acid residue 40–189); a III of the motor cortex that satisfied the following criteria were generous gift from A. Goffinet (Department of Human Physi- included: (i) complete impregnation (including all dendrites), not ology, Faculte´s Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix School of obscured by other neurons or artifacts; (ii) clear image; and (iii) Medicine, Namur, Belgium): (ii) rabbit GAD67 (1:2,000, Chemi- visibility of at least three basal dendrites. For each neuron, the con); (iii) mouse anti-NeuN, a neuronal nuclei-specific marker apical and at least three basilar dendrites (and all of their branches) (1:500, Chemicon). were traced to their natural or artificial ends. Each branch was numbered with reference to its proximity to the cell body. For Stereological Cell-Counting Method. In different cortical layers of instance, the basal branch originating from the cell body is B1, motor FPC, cell density was quantified
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