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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Al Ahdal, Hadil Title: Investigating the role of miR-21 in adult neurogenesis General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. 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Investigating the role of miR-21 in adult neurogenesis Hadil Mohammad Al Ahdal Faculty of Health Sciences Bristol Medical School A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School 64,598 words Abstract MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs that act as post- transcriptional regulators and play important roles in neurodegenerative diseases and brain disorders (Nelson et al. 2008). MiR-21, a miRNA that is dysregulated in cancers including glioblastomas, targets cellular processes including cell proliferation and apoptosis (Krichevsky & Gabriely 2009). MiR-21 has been shown to be upregulated following traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury; this upregulation has been postulated to reduce lesion size, enhance cell survival and confer better neurological outcome (Ge et al. 2014; Hu et al. 2013). Due to its effects on cell proliferation and survival, miR-21 was speculated to play a role in adult neurogenesis in the mammalian brain. The effect of altering miR-21 levels on the cell fate of newborn neurons in the adult hippocampus was investigated using transgenic mice that globally either overexpress miR-21 (miR-21 OE) or lack miR-21 (miR-21 KO). First, increased neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) of miR-21 OE mice was detected, while miR-21 KO mice showed reduced neurogenesis in the same area. Transgenic mice lacking miR-21 (miR-21 KO) demonstrated impairment in learning and memory in the Morris water maze task. Mir-21 KO mice also showed reduced neurogenesis in the subventricular zone. To further understand the pathways that are involved in miR-21 regulation in the adult brain, miR-21 targets were investigated experimentally and using bioinformatics prediction tools. These results suggest that miR-21 plays an important role in regulating adult neurogenesis and learning behaviour. Overall, this is the first study to investigate miR-21 altered expression role in the adult normal brain. Linking i miR-21 role in this study to increased miR-21 levels in the brain and spinal cord after injury, will help to identify possible therapeutic strategies for treating traumatic injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor Dr Liang-Fong Wong for her encouragement, time and support throughout my PhD studies. I wish to thank her mostly for her continues mentorship and patience. I am very grateful to Prof James Uney my second supervisor, for giving me the opportunity to be part of his team. I would like to thank my progress reviewers; Dr Fiona Holmes and Prof. David Murphy for their guidance, valuable comments and advice. I am deeply grateful to Dr Oscar Cordero-Llana for his motivations and help even when things were not good. I would also to thank Prof Clea Warburton for using her water maze tools and Dr Maeve Caldwell for her help in the animal work and tissue culture techniques. I want to acknowledge Dr Ali Bienemann and Dr Keven Kemp for their help in imaging processing. A big thank to Dr Sian Baker, Nickola Buckner and Jessica McMaster for proofreading my drafts and providing a valuable feedback. A special thank goes to of all colleagues and friends in the School of Biomedical Studies and the family of the Regenerative Medicine Laboratory for both their scientific help, friendship and all the happy moments. I owe my deepest gratitude to my husband Abdullah and my lovely children Jana, Hana and Ghazi for supporting me over the PhD good and tough times, I couldn’t do it without you. I would like to thank all my friends in Bristol and my brothers and family in Saudi Arabia, you helped to bring the balance into my life. My Parents this thesis is dedicated to you. I would like to acknowledge my sponsor Princess Norah University for funding my project. iii Author’s Declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. Signed: ……………………………………………. Date: ……………… iv v Table of contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background 2 1.1.1 Historical background 3 1.2 Neurogenic niches in the adult brain 4 1.2.1 Neurogenesis in the adult SVZ 7 1.2.2 Adult neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus 11 1.3 Adult neurogenesis and aging 14 1.3.1 Adult neurogenesis and neurodegenerative diseases 14 1.4 Functional significance of adult neurogenesis 17 1.5 Adult neurogenesis in human 20 1.6 Regulation of adult neurogenesis 21 1.6.1 Regulation by intrinsic factors 23 1.6.2 Extrinsic factors 28 1.7 The use of mice as an animal model to investigate neurogenesis 31 1.7.1 Detection methods for mouse adult neurogenesis 32 1.7.2 Markers for adult NPCs and neurogenesis 33 1.8 MicroRNA 35 1.8.1 Biogenesis of miRNAs 37 1.9 Role of miRNAs in neurogenesis 40 1.9.1 MiRNA-21 44 1.9.2 MiR-21 expression in the brain 46 1.9.3 MiR-21 in cancer 47 1.9.4 MiR-21 in traumatic brain injury 48 1.10 Hypothesis and aims of the study 50 Chapter 2 Methods 52 vi 2.1 Animals 53 2.2 Bromodeoxyuridine injection and detection 53 2.3 Histological Processing 54 2.4 Immunohistochemistry 55 2.4.1 Immunocytochemistry 55 2.4.2 Immunohistochemistry using DAB reagent 55 2.4.3 Fluorescence staining 56 2.4.4 Nissl Staining 58 2.5 Microscopy 58 2.6 Quantification of cultured cells and sections 59 2.7 SDS-PAGE and Western Blotting 60 2.7.1 Protein extraction 60 2.7.2 Western blot solutions 62 2.8 RNA extraction from hippocampal tissue 64 2.9 Analysis of miRNA expression 64 2.10 Production of cDNA for gene expression 66 2.11 q-PCR 66 2.12 Fluorescent in Situ Hybridization (FISH) for microRNA and immunofluorescent staining 67 2.13 Culture of neural stem cells from the subventricular zone (SVZ) 69 2.14 Behavioural Experiments 70 2.14.1 Water maze 70 2.15 Bioinformatics analysis 72 2.16 Statistical analysis 72 Chapter 3 Role of miR-21 in neurogenesis within the adult dentate gyrus 74 3.1 Introduction 75 3.1.1 Hippocampal anatomy and connectivity 76 vii 3.1.2 Identification and Quantification of Neurogenesis 78 3.1.3 Altering neurogenesis impacts on learning and memory 80 3.1.4 miRNA in neurogenesis 82 3.1.5 Aims 83 3.2 Results 85 3.2.1 miR-21 is expressed in the normal adult brain. 85 3.2.2 miR-21 is localized with some of the GFAP+ cells in the hippocampus 88 3.2.3 Altered miR-21 levels did not affect proliferation or astrogenesis in the hippocampus 90 3.2.4 Loss of miR-21 reduces neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus 92 3.2.5 miR-21 KO mice have impaired performance in Morris water maze task 96 3.2.6 MiR-21 knockdown increases the expression of the apoptotic marker Cleaved Caspase-3 101 3.2.7 Neurogenesis in P30 miR-21 KO animals is not impaired 103 3.2.8 Improved adult neurogenesis in aged OE mice 105 3.3 Discussion 107 Chapter 4 miR-21 target prediction and validation 118 4.1 Introduction 119 4.1.1 Principles of miRNA target prediction 122 4.1.2 miRNA target prediction tools 126 4.1.3 Experimental validation of predicted targets 130 4.1.4 Known and validated targets of miR-21 131 4.1.5 Aims 133 4.2 Results 135 4.2.1 Altered expression of miR-21 does not affect expression of other brain- enriched miRNAs 135 4.2.2 Screening of miR-21 targets using computational tools 146 viii 4.2.3 Bioinformatics analysis 150 4.2.4 Experimentally validated targets 153 4.3 Discussion 160 Chapter 5 The role of miR-21 in adult subventricular zone neurogenesis 168 5.1 Introduction 169 5.1.1 The role of miRNAs in adult SVZ neurogenesis 170 5.1.2 The structure and cellular circuit in the OB 171 5.1.3 Functional significance of adult SVZ neurogenesis 172 5.1.4 Aims 173 5.2 Results 176 5.2.1 Assessing in vitro neural differentiation of neural precursors derived from miR-21 KO and miR-21 OE mice 176 5.2.2 Reduced neurogenesis in the OB of miR-21 KO mice 183 5.2.3 Neurogenesis in the SVZ is not impaired at postnatal day 30 197 5.2.4 miR-21 loss does not influence neurogenesis in the SVZ of mice aged 12 months 199 5.3 Discussion 201 Chapter 6 General Discussion 210 REFERENCES 221 Appendix 289 ix List of Figures Figure 1-1: Neurogenesis niches in the adult mouse brain.