viruses Article Detection of H3K4me3 Identifies NeuroHIV Signatures, Genomic Effects of Methamphetamine and Addiction Pathways in Postmortem HIV+ Brain Specimens that Are Not Amenable to Transcriptome Analysis Liana Basova 1, Alexander Lindsey 1, Anne Marie McGovern 1, Ronald J. Ellis 2 and Maria Cecilia Garibaldi Marcondes 1,* 1 San Diego Biomedical Research Institute, San Diego, CA 92121, USA;
[email protected] (L.B.);
[email protected] (A.L.);
[email protected] (A.M.M.) 2 Departments of Neurosciences and Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA 92103, USA;
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[email protected] Abstract: Human postmortem specimens are extremely valuable resources for investigating trans- lational hypotheses. Tissue repositories collect clinically assessed specimens from people with and without HIV, including age, viral load, treatments, substance use patterns and cognitive functions. One challenge is the limited number of specimens suitable for transcriptional studies, mainly due to poor RNA quality resulting from long postmortem intervals. We hypothesized that epigenomic Citation: Basova, L.; Lindsey, A.; signatures would be more stable than RNA for assessing global changes associated with outcomes McGovern, A.M.; Ellis, R.J.; of interest. We found that H3K27Ac or RNA Polymerase (Pol) were not consistently detected by Marcondes, M.C.G. Detection of H3K4me3 Identifies NeuroHIV Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP), while the enhancer H3K4me3 histone modification was Signatures, Genomic Effects of abundant and stable up to the 72 h postmortem. We tested our ability to use H3K4me3 in human Methamphetamine and Addiction prefrontal cortex from HIV+ individuals meeting criteria for methamphetamine use disorder or not Pathways in Postmortem HIV+ Brain (Meth +/−) which exhibited poor RNA quality and were not suitable for transcriptional profiling.