Conditional Activation of NRG1 Signaling in the Brain Modulates Cortical Circuitry
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Conditional activation of NRG1 signaling in the brain modulates cortical circuitry Dissertation for the award of the degree „Doctor rerum naturalium“ (Dr. rer. nat.) Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Basic program Biology of the Georg-August University School of Science (GAUSS) submitted by Tilmann Unterbarnscheidt born in Essen (an der Ruhr), Germany Göttingen 2015 Ph.D. thesis committee: Prof. Klaus-Armin Nave, Ph.D. (Reviewer) Department of Neurogenetics, Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine Göttingen Prof. Dr. Dr. Hannelore Ehrenreich (Reviewer) Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine Göttingen Dr. Dieter Klopfenstein (only Ph.D. thesis comittee) Department of Biophysics, Third Institute of Physics, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Extended Ph.D. thesis committee: Prof. Dr. Martin Göpfert Department of Cellular Neurobiology, Schwann-Schleiden Research Centre, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Dr. Markus H. Schwab Department of Neurogenetics, Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine Göttingen Present address: Cellular Neurophysiology, Hannover Medical School Prof. Dr. Nils Brose Department of Molecular Neurobiology, Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine Göttingen Prof. Dr. Ralf Heinrich Department of Cellular Neurobiology, Schwann-Schleiden Research Centre, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Date of the oral examination: 05.05.2015 The present study was performed from february 2012 to april 2015 at the Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine (Göttingen) in the Department of Neurogenetics under guidance of Prof. Klaus-Armin Nave, Ph.D. and supervision of Dr. Markus H. Schwab Declaration I hereby declare that I prepared the Ph.D. thesis entitled: "Conditional activation of NRG1 signaling in the brain modulates cortical circuitry", on my own and with no other sources and aids than quoted. The first chapter of my result section is modified from our manuscript "Dysregulated Expression of Neuregulin-1 by Cortical Pyramidal Neurons Disrupts Synaptic Plasticity", published in the journal Cell Reports in 2014, and primarily reflects my contribution to the manuscript. Göttingen, April 2015 Tilmann Unterbarnscheidt To my parents. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life. And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau Acknowledgments I am sincerely grateful to Dr. Markus Schwab for his supervision. I want to thank him for his support and believing in me for all these years. With his influence, I developed as a scientist. I thank Prof. Klaus-Armin Nave Ph.D. for giving me the opportunity to work in his department for so many years. Being a member of the neurogenetics department has greatly influenced, challenged and improved my scientific work. I thank the members of my thesis committee, Prof. Dr. Dr. Hannelore Ehrenreich and Dr. Dieter Klopfenstein, for helpful discussions in the committee meetings and their support during my graduation. I further thank the members of my extended thesis committee, Prof. Dr. Nils Brose and Prof. Dr. Ralf Heinrich for taken part in my final exams. I thank Amit Agarwal Ph.D. and Dr. Payam Dibaj for a great collaboration on our manuscript and their influence to my work. I thank Dr. Magdalena Brzózka for her help and support and teaching me how to conduct behavior experiments. I also thank Prof. Dr. Moritz Rossner for allowing me to use his behavior unit and work with his equipment. I thank Prof. Dr. Evgeni Ponimaskin for the supply of antibodies. I thank Dr. Christoph Biesemann and Dr. Ben Cooper for helpful discussions on synapses and sharing their knowledge and experiences with me. I thank Dr. Ali Shahmoradi and Dr. Michael Wehr for helpful discussions and sharing their knowledge on western blotting with me. I want to thank my current and former group members, especially Dr. Viktorija Velanac for her support and sharing her scientific experiences with me and becoming a real friend. I thank Maike Gummert for cloning of the Stop-cassette. I also want to thank my colleague María Clara Soto Bernardini for her help and support. I want to thank Marcel Floerl, Annette Fahrenholz, Verena Meywirth, Ulrike Bode, Gudrun Fricke-Bode and Jenniffer Günther for technical support in many ways. I thank the animal caretakers for looking after my mice, especially Tanja Freerck and Tanja Hoffmeister. I want to thank Hans-Joachim Horn, Lothar Demel, Rolf Merker and Beate Beschke for technical help regarding computer and printing issues. I want to thank the whole neurogenetics department for the great working atmosphere. I especially want to thank my friends and colleagues Georg, Karim, Theresa, Ulrike G., Sarah, Lotti, Dorota, Wilko, Sven, Katrin, Jessica, Christina, Aiman, Iva, Andrea, Jan, Madlen, Matthäus, Torben and Susanne for their support and for making it a fun time in the lab. I’m sincerely grateful for my wonderful family that has supported me all my life. Without them, this wouldn’t have been possible. I’m also grateful to all my friends for their support. I want to especially thank Nadja Götze for her love, support, encouragement and for kicking my butt to the finish line. Content Content List of Figures ....................................................................................................... 12 Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ 14 1. Abstract ............................................................................................................. 16 2. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 17 2.1 The central nervous system ............................................................................................ 17 2.2 Schizophrenia ................................................................................................................. 22 2.3 Neuregulin1 isoforms ...................................................................................................... 23 2.4 The ErbB receptor family ................................................................................................ 26 2.5 The ErbB4 receptor ......................................................................................................... 28 2.6 NRG1/ErbB4 signaling in cortical networks during health and disease .......................... 30 2.7 Aim of this study .............................................................................................................. 36 3. Results ............................................................................................................... 37 3.1 Consequences of NRG1 deficiency on interneuronal migration and integration ............ 37 3.2 Elevated CRD-NRG1 expression leads to sustained ErbB4 hyperstimulation, altered interneuron functions, and abnormal behavior ..................................................................... 39 3.3 Generation of a conditional CRD-NRG1 transgenic mouse line ..................................... 44 3.4 NEX-Cre mediated recombination of Stop-Nrg1 restricts HA-NRG1 expression to cortical projection neurons .................................................................................................... 47 3.5 Stop-Nrg1*NEX-Cre mice model HA-NRG1 overexpression in the embryonic cortex ... 50 3.6 CamKII-Cre mice enable postnatal overexpression of HA-NRG1 in cortical projection neurons ................................................................................................................................. 52 3.7 Absense of brain pathology in Stop-Nrg1*NEX-Cre and Stop-Nrg1*CKII-Cre mice ...... 54 3.8 Conditional CRD-NRG1 overexpression has no effect on interneuronal migration and maintenance .......................................................................................................................... 59 3.9 Cortical-restricted HA-NRG1 overexpression is not linked to ventricular enlargement observed in Thy1.2 promoter-driven transgenic mice ........................................................... 64 3.10 Thy1.2-driven NRG1 transgenic mice have reduced body weight ............................... 66 3.11 Stop-Nrg1*NEX-Cre mice show no signs of anxiety-like behavior, decreased PPI or cognitive impairments, but exhibit hyperactivity .................................................................... 67 3.12 Postnatal cortical overexpression of HA-NRG1 in Stop-Nrg1*CKII-Cre mice has only minor effects on behavior ...................................................................................................... 72 3.13 Stop-Nrg1*NEX-CreERT2 mice as a tool for acute overexpression of NRG1 in the adult mouse brain .......................................................................................................................... 76 3.14 Biochemical analysis of CRD-NRG1 signaling in NRG1 transgenic mice .................... 79 3.15 NRG1 forward and backsignaling – differential recruitment of LIMK1? ........................ 81 3.16 HA-NRG1 is enriched in synaptosomes of Stop-Nrg1*NEX-Cre mice and regulates cofilin phosphorylation .......................................................................................................... 84 4. Discussion ........................................................................................................