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Effects of Chronic Psychosocial Stress on HPA Axis Functionality in Male C57BL/6 Mice and the Impact of Trait Anxiety on the Individual Stress Vulnerability

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Effects of Chronic Psychosocial Stress on HPA Axis Functionality in Male C57BL/6 Mice and the Impact of Trait Anxiety on the Individual Stress Vulnerability Effects of chronic psychosocial stress on HPA axis functionality in male C57BL/6 mice and the impact of trait anxiety on the individual stress vulnerability DISSERTATION ZUR ERLANGUNG DES DOKTORGRADES DER NATURWISSENSCHAFTEN (DR. RER. NAT.) DER FAKULTÄT FÜR BIOLOGIE UND VORKLINISCHE MEDIZIN DER UNIVERSITÄT REGENSBURG vorgelegt von Andrea Monika Füchsl aus Straubing im Jahr 2013 Das Promotionsgesuch wurde eingereicht am: 04.10.2013 Die Arbeit wurde angeleitet von: Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Inga D. Neumann Unterschrift: DISSERTATION Durchgeführt am Institut für Zoologie der Universität Regensburg TABLE OF CONTENTS I Table of Contents Chapter 1 – Introduction 1 Stress ...................................................................................................... 1 1.1 The Stress System ..................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) ..................................................... 2 1.2.2 Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis .......................................... 4 1.2 Acute vs. chronic/repeated stress ............................................................. 13 1.3 Psychosocial stress .................................................................................. 18 2 GC Signalling ....................................................................................... 20 2.1 Corticosteroid availability .......................................................................... 20 2.2 Corticosteroid receptor types in the brain .................................................. 21 2.3 Transcriptional Regulation ........................................................................ 25 2.4 Non-genomic pathways ............................................................................ 28 2.5 Negative feedback effects of GC .............................................................. 28 3 Chronic stress and GC signalling ...................................................... 36 4 Risk factors influencing the individual stress vulnerability............. 39 5 Effects of chronic subordinate colony housing (CSC) on physiological, neuroendocrine, immunological and behavioural parameters .............................................................................................. 44 6 Aim and outline of the present thesis ................................................ 50 II TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 2- Material and Methods 1 Material ................................................................................................. 55 1.1 Antibodies for protein, immunohistochemical and immunological analysis .......................................................................................................................55 1.1.1 Primary Antibodies .............................................................................55 1.1.2 Secondary antibodies .........................................................................56 1.2 Oligonucleotides .......................................................................................56 1.3 RNA isolation and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) ..............................57 1.4 Protein Extraction and Western Blotting ....................................................57 1.5 Immunohistochemical analysis ..................................................................58 1.6 Neuroendocrine analysis ...........................................................................58 1.7 Immunological analysis .............................................................................58 1.8 In vitro studies ...........................................................................................59 1.9 Chemicals, Enzymes, Reagents and Equipment .......................................60 1.10 Software .................................................................................................60 2 Methods ................................................................................................ 61 2.1 Animal models ..........................................................................................61 2.1.1 Mice ...................................................................................................61 2.1.2 Chronic subordinate colony housing (CSC) ........................................62 2.1.3 Acute heterotypic stressor exposure - Forced swim (FS) ....................62 2.2 Elevated plus-maze (EPM) .......................................................................63 2.3 Trunk blood sampling and analysis of plasma ACTH and CORT ..............63 2.4 Dexamethasone suppression test (DST) ...................................................64 2.5 Preparation of organ tissue .......................................................................64 2.5.1 Removal of different brain regions ......................................................64 2.5.2 Determination of pituitary weight and pituitary cell number .................65 2.5.3 Determination of body weight gain, adrenal and spleen weight...........65 TABLE OF CONTENTS III 2.6 Molecular Techniques - quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) using Taqman technology ...................................................................................................... 66 2.7 Protein Techniques ................................................................................... 68 2.7.1 Preparation of total cell lysates ........................................................... 68 2.7.2 Preparation of fractionated cell lysates ............................................... 68 2.7.3 Quantitative Determination of protein concentrations ......................... 69 2.7.4 SDS Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) ..................... 70 2.7.5 Western Blottting ................................................................................ 71 2.8 Immunohistochemistry .............................................................................. 74 2.8.1 ACTH immunostaining in pituitary cryo-sections ................................. 74 2.8.2 AVP and OXT immunostaining in brain cryo-sections ......................... 75 2.9 In vitro Techniques ................................................................................... 77 2.9.1 ACTH stimulation of adrenal explants in vitro ..................................... 77 2.9.2 Hippocampal cell isolation und stimulation ......................................... 77 2.10 Analysis of immunological parameters .................................................... 79 2.10.1 Determination of the histological damage score of the colon ............ 79 2.10.2 Isolation and incubation of mesenteric lymph node cells .................. 80 2.11 Statistics ................................................................................................. 81 IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 3 – Results 1 Effects of 19 days of CSC on different parameters of the pituitary ................................................................................................................. 85 1.1 Basal and acute heterotypic stress-induced plasma ACTH levels .............85 1.2 Absolute pituitary weight and total pituitary cell number ............................86 1.3 ACTH staining in the pituitary ....................................................................87 1.4 POMC mRNA and protein expression .......................................................88 1.5 CRH-R1 and AVPR-1b mRNA and protein expression .............................89 2 Effects of 19 days of CSC on AVP and OXT expression in the PVN ................................................................................................................. 91 2.1 Number of AVP positive neurons in the PVN ............................................91 2.2 Number of OXT positive neurons in the PVN ............................................93 3 Effects of 19 days of CSC on the negative feedback regulation at different levels ........................................................................................ 94 3.1 Analysis of the negative feedback at the level of the pituitary ....................94 3.1.1 GR and MR mRNA and protein expression ........................................94 3.1.2 Dexamethasone suppression test (DST) ............................................96 3.1.3 FKBP51 protein expression ................................................................97 3.1.4 GR protein expression in the nuclear fraction .....................................97 3.2 Analysis of the negative feedback at the level of the hippocampus ...........99 3.2.1 Absolute hippocampus weight and number of hippocampal cells .......99 3.2.2 GR and MR mRNA and protein expression ........................................99 3.2.3 FKBP51 protein expression .............................................................. 101 3.2.4 Per1 hnRNA expression in hippocampal cells in vitro ....................... 101 3.2.5 Hippocampal cell viability in response to corticosterone (CORT) stimulation ................................................................................................. 102 3.3 Analysis of the negative feedback at the level of the PVN ....................... 104 3.4 Analysis of the negative feedback at the level of the PFC ....................... 105 TABLE OF CONTENTS V 3.4.1 GR and MR protein expression ........................................................ 105 3.4.2 FKBP51 protein expression .............................................................. 106 4 Influence of trait anxiety on the consequences of 19 days of CSC ...............................................................................................................
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